Year of the Dragon
by Copperhead
Summary: That was quick, a new chapter already. Pantera is (C)2001 Amy K. Cyrway. We love her. She hates Starscream. Die Starscream, Die.
1. Something New

Author's note: All characters are copyright their respective creators. I do not own Transformers and I am not affiliated with Hasbro or Takara, Mainframe or Alliance, nor should any affiliation be inferred, implied or assumed. Enjoy the fic. Historian's note: "Indeterminate Timeframe" events occur shortly after "Feral Scream", but before "Crossing the Rubicon" or "Master Blaster".   
  


**Year Of The Dragon: Being Part The Second of the Zodiac Arc**

  


****Earth, Indeterminate Timeframe**   
"A bomb?" the femme asked, still unbelieving.   
"Damn straight," Copperhead replied, fiddling with the stasis pod. "My 'plan B' was to rig a bomb that would vaporize every single Maximal on this planet, including that bitch Pantera."   
"But it'll leave every Pred safe, right?"   
"Every pureborn Pred, yeah... spider-lady and crablegs'll be out of our circuits for good."   
"It's not that I don't WANT Blackarachnia and Rampage eliminated, but isn't this a bit dishonorable?"   
Copperhead turned to his companion with an incredulous grimace. "When were you ever the honorable fighter, Garrotte?"   
The femme shook her head. "Not the point, worm," she spat. "Even if I played dirty, it was always face to face."   
"Whatever," Copperhead buzzed, still working with his stasis pod. "Give a guy a hand here, ya dizzy bitch?"   
"Geez, worm, that misogyny's gonna get you in trouble one of these days." A halfhearted chuckle later, Constrictor was kneeling beside Copperhead at the floating pod. "You have this octagon loop modulator in upside down, dumbass," she mocked, pulling a polygonal piece of copper wire out and reorienting it back into its seating. "And the squamous power coupler's out of alignment. What the slot do they teach you at the PSP training grounds-- underwater basket-weaving?" Constrictor chuckled again, her denegrating tone grating on Copperhead with every word.   
"I'd get a helluva lot more work done if certain slut goddesses would keep their oral transmitters shut and their freakin' hands on their work," he droned, a very familiar way of addressing the female snake.   
"Oh, so you wanna get into a bitch-off, huh?" she quipped, rattailing a greaserag and snapping it at her companion. Copperhead smirked and nodded frenetically.   
"Fine then," she started, "you're a worthless pile of Sharkticon droppings unfit for a Quintesson slagpile's slagpile!"   
Copper smirked... "Good one, Gar. My turn."   
"Bring it on, fag," she snorted, pulling a circuitboard from her pod.   
"Your sodpiece is dirtier than Rattrap's mind!"   
"Ouch!" she laughed. "Lemme think, lemme think... your fore-bot has a vocoder on the ventral of her cranial strut and the glitch masticates like this!" Constrictor leaned her head back, causing it to bob as she made odd groaning noises.   
Copperhead gawked. "The fuck are you talking about?"   
Constrictor looked back at her companion. "Something I picked up on earth a few hundred sol ago... you wouldn't get it."   
"Might I remind you I showed up on Terra a good 40 sol before you did?" Copper chided, wagging a finger at her in mock criticism. "YOU are he one Terran humor's lost on."   
"Yeah, well yer momma was a Seeker."   
"Thanks. I take that as the deepest compliment," Copperhead chuckled, phasing an image of his past personality, Parseltongue, into his friend's mind.   
"Quit it, that freaks me out," she complained as she bent down to retrieve a fallen wrench. "Megatron'll have our shells if we aren't back soon."   
"Meggs is the least of our concerns. With Tarantulas off on his own plotting Primus-knows-what and Blackarachnia a micron away from defecting back to the Maximals, you and I are gonna be dead center in their sights when they wanna strike out, y'know?"   
The femme nodded in a very uncharacteristically somber fashion. "I'll bet my cleavage this is some sort of a trick... you said Shockwave sent you here?"   
"Yep," Copperhead responded. "I was supposed to temporally track Elder Pantera."   
"But she arrived after the Darkside crashed."   
"I wondered about that, too, for a few megacycles after I got here-- then I remembered that the Tripredacus Council had tracked her shuttle falling through time... certain types of temporal anomolies, like the Transwarp explosion wavefront, travel through all points in time-- forward and backward-- simultaneously."   
"You mean temporal anomolies are permanent," Constrictor guessed.   
"Not exactly," the snake replied, absentmindedly looking over a fried circuitboard. "They can be dissolved in the concrete present and its concrete future, but they'll still appear in the liquid future, regardless of actions taken during the present or past. It's like stopping one ripple in a pond: the rest continue outward, and the only way to stop the ripples from forming would be to not have dropped the stone in... but since this timeline's past is concrete, you can't stop the ripples without creating more."   
"You lost me with not exactly," she grumbled.   
"Simply put, they knew she'd be here, 'cuz history shows a 2 million year old Maximal starhopper that matches her registration, and two 2 million year old, unidentified crashed warships, derelict in the northern part of the planet."   
"The Axalon and the Darkside," Constrictor muttered, surprised. "I guess we're stuck here, then, huh?"   
"Shockwave said the information was classified, probably because the two ships hadn't been launched yet. So they slung my spark into a protoform, shoved it into the Darkside's cargo hold, and shot me into space... funny how things work out, huh?" he chuckled.   
"No, not funny at all," she growled, rubbing her temple. "Fuck, I hate temporal mechanics."   
"That makes two of us," Copperhead said as he slammed a hatch on the pod shut, watching a green light blink on and off. "Well poke my spark and call me Starscream, looks like we're done!"   
Constrictor spun with a scowl. "Don't joke about that," she cursed, then she saw the green blinker too. "I see," she smirked. "What now?"   
"Now... we set it off."   
Copperhead grabbed the datapad he'd left behind and blinked at it for a few moments. "We'll need two more sparks for the equilibrium drive."   
"Where are we gonna get two more sparks?" Constrictor queried, still less than enthused about the entire project.   
Copper turned to the computer and brought up the scanner array. "Right in our own backyard," he smirked, seeing two Maximal sig's heading their direction. "You take the cat, I'll handle the lizard," Copperhead barked, grabbing his null staff and running out of the cave. "Secure the area, too!"   
Before Constrictor could register her displeasure, Copperhead was out of sight. Of course, in Copperhead's case, out of sight was definitely not out of mind. ==Be careful, this time. Last time, you inverted the polarity on the forcefield! I was sore for days!==   
==Outta my brain, Worm, or I'll start thinking about breasts and lesbians.==   
The snake didn't need to be told twice.   
  
"There, on the ridge," Steeljaw whispered, forepaw pointed somewhere at the underbrush where Copperhead was hiding. "Can you see him?"   
Tyrannix squinted a moment and sighed in frustration. "Not in beast mode; I don't have forward facing optics."   
"Well, don't risk transforming... best to stay in beast mode until he sees us."   
The gigantic T. rex nodded and strode forward, massive gait outpacing even Steeljaw's rapid walking pace. "So?" Tyrannix growled.   
"So, we engage."   
"But the scanners said two Preds in the area; we've only spotted one."   
Steeljaw's aurals pricked up, feeling the presence of another Predacon nearby. "Spotted maybe... but..." He sniffed. "...there is another nearby, I can sense her."   
"Old Autobot intuition, little cat?" Tyrannix asked, narrowing his optics at the ridge, still trying to spot the Pred on the ridge.   
"You could say that... or the fact an obviously Cybertronian snake just slithered across my foot..."   
A muffled "damn!" could be heard from the underbrush at Steeljaw's right. "Terrorize!" followed, then Steeljaw was tackled by an extremely tall, well-built femmebot.   
"Get off of him!" Tyrannix roared, his beast mode mixing into his voice. "Maximize!" The rex leapt into the air-- something VERY unusual to see a Tyrannosaur do-- and broke open, forming the massively built Tyrannix. With an immense fist, he cuffed Constrictor's collar and ripped the angry femme from the steel blue feline. Then, to appease his code of honor, he threw her into a tree. "I cannot strike a female... but I can incapacitate one," he chuckled with a sardonic smirk.   
"Real smart," another voice hissed, leaping on Tyrannix's back.   
The Maximal's expression was priceless: optics wide, mouth agape, it was as if a bug had crawled down his collar and was walking on his back. This bug, however, was venomous.   
"Wanna die, lizard lips?" Copperhead snarled in his aural receptor, plunging his two, energon laced wrist daggers into the Convoy's shoulders. "Nah, can't have that happen, you're much more valuable to all of us alive..."   
"Tell your... master Megatron..." Tyrannix grunted, grabbing at Copper to no avail, "...that if he strikes... argh!... the Maximals down... more will... come to battle him!"   
"Oh, how heroic." Copper squealed in delight as he upped the amount of energon poison being injected. Within moments, Tyrannix was on the forest floor. "Get the kitty, dammit!"   
"What's it look like I'm doing?!" Constrictor groaned, reaching her feet and aiming a throwing dagger at Steeljaw.   
"No!" Copperhead shouted, jumping off Tyrannix's back and rushing to Constrictor's side. "Alive. Without active sparks, the machine isn't gonna do squat, got it?"   
"Whatever," she said, and threw the knife.   
"DAMMIT!" Copperhead gasped, jumping after it, but the knife was already sailing toward the forehead of the dazed Steeljaw.   
And it hit. The pommel glanced off the Maximal's forehead, and the knife went clattering to the rocks below. The cat fell to the ground with a mechanical WHUMP.   
"You could have TOLD me you were gonna do that," Copperhead complained, going over to Steeljaw to make sure he was out. A mental flick of a switch inside Steeljaw's core processor ensured he wouldn't be coming online at an inopportune time. A similar trick inside Tyrannix's processor-- though this was a bit harder considering some of the odd resistance this one put up-- and the two stasis-locked Maximals were in tow back to Copperhead's little cave.   
  
"I can't find them!" Cheetor whined, thumping the scanner against his leg. "It's like their sparks totally blipped off!"   
*/Keep searching, Cheetor... three megacycles is far too long not to report in./*   
"Okay, Bigbot, but..." A bright flash from a few klicks away gave Cheetor a start. "What in the spotted heck?!" To get a better look, the golden feline shifted to beast mode, his hunchbacked form blasting into the forest.   
*/Cheetor, report! Cheetor?/* There was no response, only static.   
  
"This has gotta be some Predacon trap," Cheetor audibly thought to himself. "Neutral ground, maybe, but that's never stopped them from setting up jamming tower..."   
"Ya know," came a curt female voice from behind, "for a cat, you sure are loud."   
Cheetor whirled to see a jet black femme, flanked on each side by two girls: one was black and white, a wolf, the other, brown and copper, a coyote.   
"Elder Pantera!" Cheetor smiled, waving. "Hi Wulfie..." He nearly blushed.   
"Hi Spots," she smiled, digging her toe into the dirt.   
Inuarai made a gagging noise.   
"Cheetor, what are you doing here?"   
The hunchbacked Maximal pointed to the cliffs. "Saw a flash of light coming from that direction," he said. "Came to investigate."   
"So did we," Blancwulf piped. "Maybe we could check it out together?"   
Nari was now rolling her eyes. "Good idea; we'll split up to cover more ground," Pantera ordered. "Inuarai, you're with me... Cheetor, take Blancwulf."   
With a twisted salute, Cheetor and Blancwulf stalked into the trees.   
  
Pantera and Inuarai had taken not fifty steps into the deeper woods when another light-- this one more gentle and hazy than bright and piercing-- glazed over them. "The slot?" Pantera muttered, rubbing her optics and stumbling.   
"Mamacat, you're glowing!" Nari oohed, pointing at her mentor.   
"I..." She held her hand out and shook her head. "How in the pit?" Pantera swung around, hearing a twig snap behind her. She was met with a very angry Cobra face, which immediately shouted, with a southern twang:   
"TERRORIZE!"   
Pantera instinctively kicked out, catching Quickstrike in the gut and sending him sprawling. Inuarai wasn't nearly as quick, and a blast from a figure hidden in the brush rang out. It caught Inuarai in the small of the back, and at first glance, it didn't seem all too severe... but the blast pushed forward, bringing Nari into the air, finally ripping out of her stomach in a wide beam of destructive energy that rushed into the sky.   
"Cruelty!" screamed Rampage. "It is my life's blood..." The orange and silver crab burst from the underbrush, cannon barrels still smoking, as Inuarai lay, near death.   
The reddish glow had waned some, but Pantera seemed to have absorbed a good part of it... she glowed as she screamed, her body tearing apart. Pantera's limbs twisted. Her voice played chords of agony as the wave overtook her.   
"Ma...macat..." Inuarai grunted, the light in her optics dimming. Rampage merely cackled that manic laugh for which he was known, gleefully clicking his crab claws together.   
"There'll be no 'Mamacat' to pull your fat out of the fryer this time, little vixen..." Rampage chuckled, thrusting one of his stilleto-pointed feet through her skidplate, cleaving a leg off, with all the glee of a schoolyard bully yanking the wings off a butterfly. He did the same with her shoulder, shredding the metal and fur, bleeding her of bio-matter and mech fluid, and sending the arm skittering across the rock. "Just... let the pain grow... let your anger fester, while there's time. Watch your life ebb away-->GLUK!<" A laserbolt cut through Rampage's mandibles, melting the metal and cooking the flesh. Cheetor, growling bestially, leapt from a treelimb onto the crab's back, shredding his armor with his diamond-edged claws. "Don't... hurt... my friends!" he roared, biting Rampage's antennae off.   
Blancwulf was ripping Quickstrike limb from limb in her jaws, ferociously tearing at his arachnid parts while the reptilian parts did their best to fight back. The snake's fangs had shattered when it tried to bite the barrel of her railgun as they grappled in robot mode. But with Quickstrike's assault, the railgun had been damaged beyond usefulness, causing Blancwulf to shift to beast mode. Neither form bade well for Quickstrike: four of his eight scorpion legs had been rent from its body by Blancwulf's powerful jaws, and his pinsers were of no use as Blancwulf had pinned him on his stomach. "Yer... gonna git it!" Quickstrike moaned as Wulfie shredded his chitinous armor. "The bossbot's gonna..."   
"Shut... UP!" she snapped, biting off his left pinser. Her snowy muzzle now stained brownish-red, she leapt off of Quickstrike to assist Cheetor.   
Bearing down for a jump, she was distracted by a shot ringing out, both on the battlefield and in her-- and everyone else's-- mind.   
==Everyone stay still,== a droning voice called in their heads. Without the thought of arguing, Blancwulf froze, as did Cheetor and Rampage. Even Quickstrike and Inuarai quit twitching. The only one not effected was...   
"Mamacat?!" Blancwulf gasped, looking at the crimson-and-silver clad behemoth rising from where she'd collapsed mere moments ago.   
"Where is he?" she snarled.   
"Who?" Wulfie responded, still frozen in place.   
"He's here somewhere," she muttered, eyes wide, scanning the area, and spinning around. "Come out, you bastard!" she shouted.   
A golden blur streaked past her at high speed, but there was no air displacement... as if it had been merely light. "Parseltongue!" she screamed, voice echoing into the forest. "Come, show yourself, you COWARD!"   
==No need to shout, Artemis...==   
"Get... out of my mind..." she growled, teeth clenched and face screwed, as if pained. "...or... it won't be pleasant, I promise you..."   
==Come now, Artemis Prime, you'd be hard pressed to lay a finger on me.==   
"You'll be hard pressed to have a finger left, you bastard," she snarled, dropping to her hands and knees. "What're yo..."   
==Oh Primus, what did that madman do?!== came the voice in her head, then the pain stopped, and as Pantera looked up, she could see a green and red form kneeling at Inuarai's side.   
"GET AWAY FROM HER!" she screamed, leaping forward to pull what was obviously Copperhead away from Nari. "Your kind... they killed one of my children, they're not getting to another." Tears of lubricant streaming down her cheeks, a small crystalline node on her chest glowing, Pantera rushed to Inuarai's side. "If you hurt her any more, Primus help me, I'll have your spark..."   
"Let the man work, little lady," came a low, rumbling tone from behind her. Before she knew it, an immense golden hand had clasped her waist and was hauling her into the air. The golden stream still poured from the trinket on her collar, snaking its way to Inuarai's broken form. "He knows what he's doing..."   
A hand shot up from the working Copperhead. "Silence, Mayhem," he muttered, and the form that had snatched Pantera ceased talking. "And put her down..."   
Mayhem, as Copper called him, complied, releasing Pantera. "Don't interfere and your girl will be fine. Now let me work."   
The golden light still wound from Pantera to Inuarai, but Copperhead disregarded it, quickly sticthing her cleft arm back to her body with copper cording, psionically shunting the mech fluid bleedoff by switching certain fluid pumps off and others on. "Heal her..." he muttered to the copper wiring as he sewed. "Mayhem, please, bring her leg."   
Pantera finally got a good look at the giant who'd grabbed her: there was no way she could be seeing this. He was... he was a Dragon! How in the world did...   
"Mutant beast mode?" she asked aloud, a question that was halfway out of curiosity, halfway reaching a conclusion.   
"Yes," Mayhem responded emptily. "When the device activated, my spark was twisted along with my body..." He dropped Inuarai's leg at Copper's position and sat on his knees, looking down at Pantera. "I do not know if it left my mind intact."   
"I think I know how that feels," Pantera replied, halfway joking. "Right now, I'm not sure if I'm altogether here, either."   
"It's common to all the TM-2's," Cheetor muttered, hopping off Rampage's nearly-static locked form. "We get a wave of angry, 'I hate being me' monsteritis... you'll get over it. Whadda we do with Crablegs there?"   
"Leave him and move on," Copperhead ordered. "Dinobot will feel the pain he's feeling right now, soon enough, and come to find him. By then, we'll have left."   
"You're helping a Maximal, Snakes," Cheetor noted. "That ain't gonna win you a lot of brownie points with the Preds."   
"But your Optimus Primal will welcome me with open arms for saving the life of one of the children..." he grumbled sarcastically.   
"Megatron's favor isn't really relavent anymore," Mayhem noted. "I could crush him with a thought."   
"Pantera... what is that glow emanating from you?"   
Tera shrugged, but Cheetor answered. "Dinobot and I both do that when we're hurt... our sparks start working and heal our bodies. We got it from Rampage's spark."   
"But... why does Pantera have it if she's not a child of Rampage?" Copper asked. "Would I?"   
"Good question," Cheetor snorted. "How's Nari?"   
"Yeah, is she going to live?" Blancwulf asked hurriedly.   
"Artemis's... glow," he chuckled, "and my psionics will let her see another sunrise, but she should get to CR soon."   
Cheetor nodded. "Can we move her?"   
"She can move herself." He waved a hand over her optics-- more for show than for function. "Wake."   
Inuarai's eyes sparkled back to life, and she slowly sat up. "What in the stripey heck happened?"   
"Rampage pretty much eviscerated you, sis," Blancwulf chuckled, placing her hand gingerly on Inuarai's undamaged shoulder.   
Pantera looked at Rampage. "As much as I want to rend X limb from limb... we need to get you to safety first. Copperhead..."   
He stood, dusting himself off. "Yes, I am coming with you. The Predacons kill... for pleasure. For... no reason. It's sickening."   
"Is that you talking, or the Transmetal insanity?" Cheetor chuckled.   
"You'll never know," Copper snapped, almost playfully. _Almost_.   
"What about you?" Wulfie asked, propping Inuarai against her shoulder.   
"What about me?" he growled, stalking to the edge of the clearing, Mayhem behind him.   
"Coming back to base with us?"   
"I have my mind to clear, as does Mayhem here. My comrade has gone missing, as well; finding her takes precendence over a Maximal hug-fest... one of your Maximal brethren was also with us, in the explosion... you should find him."   
With that, Copper and Mayhem faded from their minds and into the forest. Rampage and Quickstrike stirred a bit, groaning.   
"I think now'd be a good time to haul," Cheetor suggested, looking at Rampage's flickering optics.   
"Ya think?" Blancwulf chuckled. "Gimme a hand with this sack of slag," she said with a flip smile. Cheetor slid his arm under Inuarai's armpit, clutching Blancwulf's hand.   
Smiling, the two dragged her away.   
As the three of them ground into the forest, making as much racket as they possibly could, Pantera gazed into the woods.   
"You saved her... someone I consider my own daughter... after all your atrocities, you do have some compassion. We'll meet again, Copperhead." Turning, she paced back into the woods to laugh with the kids again. 


	2. Something Old

Author's note: All characters are copyright their respective creators. I do not own Transformers and I am not affiliated with Hasbro or Takara, Mainframe or Alliance, nor should any affiliation be inferred, implied or assumed. Enjoy the fic. Historian's note: "Indeterminate Timeframe" events occur shortly after "Feral Scream", but before "Crossing the Rubicon" or "Master Blaster".   
  


**Year Of The Dragon: Being Part The Second of the Zodiac Arc   
Chapter Two**

  


****Earth, Indeterminate Timeframe**   
The forest was quiet, save for the sound of ragged breathing. The metallic intake and the vocal exhalation had driven all the tiny woodland creatures away. A tinny grunting started, rapidly escalating to a yowl of pain.   
"His pain as mine..." he hissed, barely able to contain the scream he wanted to issue. "For ever more..."   
Bone and steel, violet and crimson, the beast-- a twisted, skeletal representation of an American _Velociraptor antirrhopus_, or Deinonychus-- stalked into the forest, growling in pain that grew with every step. "I shall find him and rip his spark, still pulsing, from its chamber, and I shall _eat_ it and I shall be whole yet again..."   
"You have much confidence in your abilities, Predacon," a grim voice chuckled sarcastically from behind. "Is it Rampage's death you desire? Or your own personal peace?"   
The raptor's snout lifted, its unfleshed nostrils twitching. "Maximal," he drawled, a ragged, breathy sentence. "Your spark pulses with familiar odor, yet... much is different."   
"Much is indeed different," he droned. The sound of dry leaves being crushed underfoot crackled before Dinobot, but there was no shape: only a few dead leaves spinning in the breeze.   
"Show yourself!" the raptor snarled, a trilling growl roiling at the back of the beast's throat.   
A blue hand appeared from the aether, cuffed Dinobot around the neck, and pushed him into a tree. "I shall show myself, Predacon, when I feel it is necessary... at the moment, you will listen." Instinctively, Dinobot's claws shot out, but touched nothing but air. His jaws snapped, biting nothing.   
"You see, you're at the disadvantage here, old friend. Will you cease your struggling and submit?" The grip tightened, but Dinobot stayed fast, snarling and biting but catching nothing.   
"I submit to no one!" he roared, pushing forward, but the invisible hand held him fast against the tree's shaft. "I order you, show yourself, or die!"   
"Fine... if that is your wish." A silver and indigo visage faded into view. "Remember this face, Dinobot?"   
The red-orange optics widened in recognition... and fear. "Steeljaw!" The eyes narrowed again. The raptor's eyes didn't show the confusion he was experiencing. There was no sign of Steeljaw in any of his memory banks, yet, even with such a drastic cosmetic change, such an ultimate change in his demeanor, Dinobot knew the face intently, without a second guess. "How..."   
"How did I become what I am? I suppose I owe it to you. Copperhead copied the technology that resurrected you. He spliced each of us with Rampage's spark energy, amping our power and tinging our minds with a taste of his sanity level-- or lack thereof." Steeljaw loosened the grip on Dinobot's neck, close to certain the raptor would not attack. He still kept most of his body invisible and intangible. "I was ambushed, with Tyrannix... you remember Tyrannix?" A light in Dinobot's optic flickered in the affirmative. "Our static-locked bodies were thrown in stasis pods, infused with what was supposed to be a bomb. Unconsciously, the energy unlocked our feral sides... changed us inside and out. I am a different bot than I was two days ago... as are you."   
Dinobot grunted indifferently. Steeljaw knew, even with the stoic demeanor Dinobot posed, that he agreed deep down.   
"Return to the Maximals..."   
"Your foolishness is..." Dinobot paused. "...uplifting. Are you finished?"   
The hand disappeared, leaving Dinobot free. He slumped to the forest floor, snarling. "We shall meet again, Steeljaw," he muttered, disappearing back into the woods. "And then, I will gain the upper hand..."

***

  
It was as if the stasis pod was bleeding. Moments before, there had been the form of Constrictor, sleeping inside the pod, but now, the chamber lay empty, her death realized by Copperhead as "for the cause." Not so.   
...not a chance he'd get rid of me that easily... the dripping, silvery fluid thought. ...never in a million solar cycles... Terrorize!   
The fluid had begun to collect in a puddle, a liquid mirror sliding across the cave's floor. With that word, it shuddered, bubbled. It began to grow, its molecules shifting themselves into a new configuration. "Really interesting," the silvery blob uttered, extending a pair of pseudopods that tried to shape themselves into arms. Another two protrusions from the bottom of this metallic amoeba lifted it off the floor, forming makeshift legs. Now resembling an embryo with tiny arms and legs, and vestigial tail, an oversized head began to shape itself, a clump of a nose first, then tiny concavities for eyes, as gossamer flagellae stretched out and recolored themselves to resemble patchy, uneven hair. A globular formation on the upper half split into two spheres, melding themselves halfway into the body, as the midsection narrowed then broadened, giving the fetus-thing a vaguely feminine appearance. "Needs a bit of improvement..." the she-blob muttered, staring at the quasi-arm with nonexistant eyes. "But..."   
The sounds of voices and the rustling of foliage alerted the new lifeform, which immediately splashed back into the liquid metal pool on the ground. As two forms carrying a third between them, followed by a forth a few paces behind, came into view, the pool shot out tiny, spindly legs and scuttled back under a control panel.   
"This was the cave... any sign of Steeljaw and Constrictor?" the male asked-- a pair of clawed orange-speckled-black paws-- helping the petite female-- slender, copper colored kneeboots with 2 inch spikes-- he had been carrying into a sitting position.   
"Just a few remnants of Steeljaw's frame-- no mech fluid traces or any sign of his spark," the pair of black and white flats replied. They were answered by... Oh Gods, yes!   
"Dead," thigh-high bitch boots responded coldly.   
"No!" the cat paws roared. The puddle extened an inconspicuous stalk of fluid alloy from under its hiding place, bringing the four into view. All were Maximals. One-- thigh-high's-- was the Elder bitch the Maxies had talked about. Fuzzy copper leggins and black-and-white flats were only kids, from the sizes of their frames, and the male... was Cheetor.   
The blob quivered in anger, creating a barely audible rippling noise in the cave.   
"Steeljaw can't be dead! He's survived MUCH worse than this over the years!"   
The Elder female sighed grimly. "I know that better than you, spots, but face facts," she almost growled. "There's no sign of either of them-- and traces that his shell was shattered and his spark... Primus knows how his spark was snuffed."   
"But..." the male whined.   
"But what? Steeljaw was an able warrior, but too idealistic to serve the Maximals fully in any capacity..."   
"But Mamacat, you served with him on the Council... before the Beast Wars. Didn't you say--?"   
"Blancwulf, times have changed since I left Cybertron."   
So Two-Toned Flats was Blancwulf. The blob made a mental note.   
"Duh," grunted the obviously weak Copper Leggins.   
"Inuarai, save your strength," the Elder ordered. "His capacity as an Elder concerns none of you children; what matters is that he was my friend-- our friend-- and died as he lived."   
"What's that supposed to mean?!" Cheetor roared. "You didn't know him! He wasn't idealistic, he was wise! He knew that fighting didn't--"   
The elder female snarled again; this was turning into a real life catfight. "I swear, Cheetor, if you say 'didn't solve everything', I'll rip out your lingual acuator!"   
"Listen, Pantera, you may be a Maximal Elder on Cybertron, but here in the Beast Wars," Cheetor roared. "we're all EQUAL!"   
"Cheets," Blancwulf pleaded. "Calm down... Nari's getting weaker."   
"She wouldn't be so weak if Pantera hadn't decided to go spelunking! She'd be at the Ark sitting in a nice warm CR." Cheetor crept to Inuarai's side, but the whine of a hand cannon stopped him in his tracks.   
"Don't even think about moving her, Spots, and that is an order from your direct superior."   
"If I don't move her, she'll die," he said back, eyes blazing with fury. This was starting to get interesting... maybe it was time to skedaddle...   
...or make oneself known.   
"Constrictor..." a voice from under a control panel seethed, "...Terrorize!"   
This time, having seen exactly how the shape should go, the transformation worked. The console burst off its moorings, flying across the cave and into the far wall with a sparking crash. Beneath was the crouching form of a lithe yet solidly build femmebot. Greenish silver in hue, and flowing as if poured rather than built, Constrictor stood: she was almost a caricature of femininity.   
"Hello, Minimals," she chuckled throatily. "Welcome to your own damn funerals..."   
Pantera's optics narrowed, and in what seemed like a nanoklick, the hand cannon moved in its aim from Cheetor to the new interloper.   
"Oh, somebody's feeling lucky..." the green femme laughed. "So go ahead, make my day..."   
Pantera fired three rounds-- one at the new adversary's head, another two in the gut. The shots left three gaping holes-- one in the head, another two in the gut-- that but there was no wound; no splashing gore of mech fluid. All that was left of the firefight were three scorch marks on the wall behind Constrictor.   
"You wanna try that again? Or can I just kill you now?"   
Pantera scoffed, snarled, and laughed at the same time. "Energy weapons might not do what needs to be done, but by the pit--" She leapt on Constrictor, feral feline instinct kicking in. The cat-femme bit and scratched, spat and hissed, blocked at every shot by her opponent.   
"Get Nari to safety!" Pantera roared. Cheetor, knowing that the battle had turned Pantera's favor for him back into the realm of the positive, scooped Inuarai over one shoulder, clutched Blancwulf under the opposite arm, and shot out of the cave like a bolt.   
As for Pantera...   
"Every time I see you, you look more whorish," she grunted, tearing away a lump of Constrictor's liquid skin only to have it regenerate into the latter's arm.   
"I take that as a compliment, deary," the maniac chuckled, shifting her body's density to a near solid state. "But you..." she smirked, transforming her left hand into a thirteen inch blade, "need a fashion consultant..." The blade drove home in Pantera's gut, piercing its way through flesh and steel and polymer and ending its journey on the other side of the feline's back.   
Pantera made a gurgling noise, spitting a wash of mech fluid onto her chin and slumping against Constrictor, unconscious... probably dead. Constrictor let Pantera slump to the ground, then crouched, moving a hand over the wound to make sure the knife had done its duty...   
Oh, it had... and then some. Constrictor grinned maniacally and dropped to the floor, a sticky puddle of greenish mercury.   
"This will NOT do for a beast mode," she thought aloud, only to be answered by a dying gurgle from Pantera. Scuttling out of the cave and into the forest on her hundred tiny crab legs, Constrictor spied a large form moving lackadaisically through the underfoliage. Immediate recognition came, and the chartreuse blob rushed toward it in an amoebic leap, spilling across the serpent's backside, engulfing the being in silvery death.   
A few moments passed as Constrictor hummed an amorphous tune to match her new amorphous body, but then the liquid "shell" broke, leaving behind a dead snake and its exact doppelganger-- although radioactively metallic green-- side by side. "Wonderful! Coming into contact with a creature imprints its physical form on me... this is gonna be useful..."   
With that, the newly reconsolidated Constrictor shuttled off into the underbrush, looking for any signs of her next victim: Copperhead.   
Meanwhile, in the cave above, the tiny golden node resting between Pantera's collarbones lit up, a calm golden glow that reached out like a finger, creeping down her chest and into the bleeding hole on her stomach. As it worked-- amidst the aura, one could see cleft wires reattaching, fluid lines that had been cut being restored, mech fluid flowing again-- Pantera's optics flickered back on and she coughed a few times, finally croaking, "Thank Primus for Rampage..." She shook her head again. "Ok, now I really have gone nuts..." She fell back into unconsciousness, but this time, far from death.   
On the other side of the forest, a golden dragon roared its way along, crashing down trees, uprooting families of small woodland creatures from their homes, all the while being ridden by a fourteen-foot-long green, blue, and purple King Cobra.   
"Faster!" Copperhead yelled gleefully. "Go faster!"   
With a pleasant roar, the Dragon let out a burst of acid vapor, felling a line of trees before them. Then he did something unexpected.   
In the rustle of spreading wings and laughing Transformers, the Dragon took wing, flapping into the air with hurricane force.   
"I thought the wings were for show!" Copperhead bellowed into the behemoth's ear.   
"I suppose not!" Mayhem replied, engaging the twin under-wing mounted vernier engines and soaring even higher. "Are you complaining?"   
"Not at all!" Copper responded.   
==My my... you're unreasonable chipper for someone who's just died and been reborn== echoed a new, yet eerily familiar voice inside Copperhead's mind.   
==There's no reason to be sad now that I'm a boy with his dragon... who is this?== he mentally chuckled in response.   
==You're quite familiar with me...== it nearly hissed. ==In fact, your knowledge of me is quite intimate. Unfortunately, my knowledge of you at present is rather limited.==   
==I recognize you now== Copper reported, a smile crossing his snout on the Earthly plane. "Parseltongue," he responded with a chuckle.   
"What's that, snakey?" Mayhem called back over the roar of his burners and the whipping of the wind.   
"Nothing, keep flying-- I want to reach the Ark quickly!"   
"The Ark?" Mayhem bellowed. "You got it!" With a sharp lurch westward, the Dragon made a turn, now jetting to the mountain-buried Autobot starship. "What're we doing at the Ark?"   
"Meeting an old acquaintance... you might say," he yelled, "that he's just like me!"   
With that, Mayhem put on an extra burst of speed, shooting the dragon and its rider closer and closer with each passing second.   


***

  
Naturally, he'd be furious... he always is. Especially considering how many Predacons were disappearing, and at such an alarming rate. First Blackarachnia goes AWOL, then Copperhead and Constrictor die in that "space bridge" doohickey they were building. Quickstrike feared for his life... amidst big powerful jackasses like Rampage and Dinobot, not to mention Sin... The fuzor had been quaking in his pinsirs for days. Even the computer had it out for him.   
"Err, Ah got them reports ya asked for, bossbot," Quickstrike, still nursing his shredded armor and barely-attached limbs, said as he handed the purple and bronze tyrant the datapads. "Them Maximals almost took me 'n Rampage out, but we managed to scrape by..."   
"Excellent," he muttered, looking over both the battle log-- video shot by Quickstrike's own snake eyes-- and the stolen datadisk. "This figure here," he said, pointing at a green and blue blur on the battle log's screen. "Who is that?"   
Quickstrike gulped, knowing full well who it was.   
"I'm wating... you shall answer, yess..." Megatron's optics narrowed, his furor building.   
"Um... err... heh... wellsir, lookie here..." he mumbled.   
"Out with it!" the rex barked.   
"Well, it's Copperhead, sir." Quickstrike covered his eyes with the hooded cobra head that formed his right hand.   
"So he is alive, yess... this adds a new dynamic to the Beast Wars." Megatron did not blast Quickstrike. In fact, he seemed genuinely... pleased!   
"Am Ah free ta go, bossbot?" the Fuzor asked.   
"Leave me, yess... I have much to look over."   
Shifting to beast mode, and with the scuttling of chitin on metal, Quickstrike left the command chamber as fast as his four remaining legs could carry him... off to an overextended and wasteful CR bath, no doubt, thought Megatron.   
"Yess... no... indeed..." the Predacon tyrant muttered, stroking his chin. "Sin, Calamity, Waspinator, to the command chamber."   
One heavy buzzing, one set of mandibles clicking, and the whooshing of a barely audible quartet of wings, made their way to Megatron's throne, a motley crew of insects at Megatron's beck and call.   
With a chorus of 'Terrorize', all three robots stood looking up at their master.   
"Wazzzpinator at your zzzzervizze, O Mighty Megatronnn..." the subcommander reported.   
Sin sneered, and Calamity bowed deeply. A scathing remark entered Sin's mind-- she'd have to tell it to Calamity's face later on, but for now it filed itself away as Megatron was about to speak.   
"It seems the prodigal son hath made his return... by thrashing two of my agents. This is unacceptable, noo... the three of you are to serve as a distraction to the Maximals-- and Copperhead-- whilst I reconstruct my grand gambit on Optimus Prime's spark."   
Sin nearly scoffed aloud at Megatron's foolishness. The last time he'd tried to obliterate the First Convoy, time itself had nearly unravelled. Sin was sure this time there would be little difference.   
"Understood, me liege," Calamity gushed, bowing deeper still. Sin felt like throwing up. Returning to a normal stance, she and Waspinator made their way out of the room, leaving a near-retching Sin behind. Megatron eyed his lieutenant with disdain.   
"Something you wish to say, moth?" he asked. "Speak now, yess..."   
"My lord," she sneered, "Calamity is less sincere than I am. But at least you KNOW when I'm about to stab you in the back. Keep an eye on her, she's fixing to overthrow you any day now."   
Megatron chuckled, then belched out a full-on guffaw. "Yess... you always made the perfect jester, Sin... but I can understand your unwillingness to be surpassed. I shall keep an eye on her, yess... no go, join them; I wish you luck."   
"What about a gag supressant?"   
Megatron laughed again good-naturedly and dismissed her.   


***

The night had a bit of a chill to it. For creatures with no nerve endings, and one's proximity to an active lava field, the chill could still be felt. "I positively despise lookout duty," Lockjaw mumbled. "It's so... beneath me."   
Alone, the seemingly insane-- and inane-- Lockjaw had the chance to let his hair down and speak like himself again. "Whatever Megatron says..."   
Paws padding closer pricked Lockjaw's hyena ears up. "Fangstriker," he smiled, turning around, letting his mouth foam.   
"Prettybot!" he barked, leaping on her. "Pretty pretty pretty..."   
"Ok, ok, get off!" the dire wolf yipped, half enjoying the attention, half disgusted by the flecks of drool coming off Lockjaw's muzzle. "Get off!" she hooted, mustering her strength to shove him off. With a snarling woof, she leapt at the hyena and pinned him, a lupine smile drawn across her muzzle. "Hi there, Chippy!" she growled playfully. "You can drop the cretin act now; I heard you soliloquizing as I came up here."   
Lockjaw's eyes widened and is ears drooped. "Damnation," he muttered. "So you've found me out..."   
"Sheesh, it was kind of obvious... you have a brilliant technical mind."   
Lockjaw shook his head. "So's Waspinator, but the rest of the Predacons consider him stupider than myself..."   
"Yeah, but Waspy doesn't try to rise above his station."   
"Indeed... but I rather enjoyed the charade. You will keep my secret?"   
Fangstriker nodded her head fervently. "If you won't tell Megatron what I put in his CR bath."   
Extending a paw, Lockjaw chuckled. "Deal." Fangstriker placed hers on top and pressed down. "Quite a handshake you have there," Lockjaw quipped. Fangstriker merely chuckled and shook her head.   
"Our shift's up in fifty cycles..." she noted.   
"S'pose Megatron would mind if we stayed out late?"   
"Do you think he'd even bother to check?" Lockjaw lifted an eyebrow and snorted derisively at Fangstriker's comment.   
"Of course not... When've you EVER seen him show the slightest bit of compassion for a missing soldier?"   
"The fifth of last Never," Fangstriker shrugged.   
"Damn straight... god, he's worse than Renegade."   
"Renegade?"   
Lockjaw lowered his head and wagged his tail slowly and evenly. His ears smoothed themselves against the back of his head and he beared his teeth. "Autobot... very VERY meticulous in causing my downfall during the Wars..."   
"Ah... I know the feeling," Fang grumbled, placing her ears similarly. "What good is dwelling on the past, huh? Renegade and Speedsta aren't here, so we'll be fine! Just as long as we kick as much Maximal skidplate as Cybertronianly possible..."   
Lockjaw found this uproariously funny. "You have something in your spark, Fangstriker. It's undescribable, but I really like it... you'll go far in this world."   
"I hope so," she muttered, her mood dimming. "There's just so much to deal with..."   
"You'll live. We all live." 


	3. Something Changed

Author's note: All characters are copyright their respective creators. I do not own Transformers and I am not affiliated with Hasbro or Takara, Mainframe or Alliance, nor should any affiliation be inferred, implied or assumed. Enjoy the fic. Historian's note: "Indeterminate Timeframe" events occur shortly after "Feral Scream", but before "Crossing the Rubicon" or "Master Blaster".   
  


**Year Of The Dragon: Being Part The Second of the Zodiac Arc   
Chapter Three**

  


****Earth, Indeterminate Timeframe**   
"Has Cheetor reported back yet?" the taller Maximal asked.   
"Nope, there's a lot of interference," replied his stocky comrade. "Can't pinpoint the source."   
"Prime," the taller muttered. "I'm going to find him; notify Blackarachnia and Silverbolt to rendezvous with me at Grid Kathexis in a megacycle." With that, Optimus Primal sprung to the air, transforming into a grand airjet of orange and blue hues. Pushing lightly on the thrusters mounted to his boots, he was off into the rainy afternoon.   
Rhinox stayed at his post, opening a garbled communications channel to the scouting eagle-wolf hybrid and his arachnoid counterpart.   
"Silverbolt, respond," Rhinox ordered. "Blackarachnia, do you read?" Neither responded with anything more than unintelligible staticky nonsense. "I repeat: Units Silverbolt and Blackarachnia, respond."   
Naturally there was no answer. Rhinox knew the reason, of course, as did Optimus Primal and, probably, Blackarachnia and Silverbolt. Steeljaw and Tyrannix had gone missing a few days before, along with, though the reports from the other side had been sketchy, two of the Predacons as well, though names were not received from the "informant" (In reality, Tigatron had pulped the face of Longspot, to retrieve this information, and only after "undermining" Longspot's capacity to run away).   
"Could you be any slower?" Rhinox growled at Teletran-1's uplink, clunking the side of his terminal with an undignified rhino-grunt.   
Finally-- after MUCH cajoling of the link between the two computers-- Rhinox had his results and was most certainly not pleased. "These have got to be wrong," he muttered before a blast of crimson-violet light engulfed him, knocking him to the floor and out of his senses. 

***

Silverbolt barked gaily, looping the loops in the air, barrel rolling, making general pallaver in his freedom.   
"Oh, my love, you do not know the wonderous feeling that comes with a set of wings!" he murred into his commlink, performing another five-point stationary spin.   
*/Not a chance you'll see me airborne anytime soon, flyboy...\* the venomous purr retorted. */We spiders stick to low-altitude acrobatics.\*   
"I could always come down there and perform some acrobatics with you," the Fuzor offered, dipping a bit and banking eastward.   
*/Oh you would, woul---\*   
Static. Connection broken. No trailer response. No return signal. "My love?" Silverbolt called, half into the communicator, half into the misty orange aether creeping across the forest below. He shot himself into a steep dive, using the impetus gravity offered to boost his rate of descent. With an echoing "Maximize!" and the sound of two sets of metallic talons rushing along the rock-strewn forest floor, Silverbolt was down, searching for his love.   
He found her, sprawled across a flat boulder, trembling spastically. "Blackarachnia?" he whispered, but she was too far gone in her tremor to answer.   
"Dark venom of my heart, what has happened?"   
A gurgling cry rose from Blackarachnia's throat, escalating to a mech-fluid-curdling shriek as shafts of orange and golden light burst from her shell. "Blackarachnia?!" Silverbolt gasped, watching his love transform. Chitinous, techno-organic legs burst from her shoulders, her hourglass-printed abdomen distending into a livid shade of crimson.   
"Silverbolt!" she wailed as she metamorphosed.   
Then the light and screaming subsided, and what was left was a very different looking, extremely weakened Blackarachnia.   
A Blackarachnia that was now a Transmetal mark II. 

***

What had become of Rhinox? Parseltongue wondered, his wraithlike consciousness bathing itself in the supercharged particle mist that had overtaken the entire Ark. The thought body drifted to Rhinox's position, skipping across the fallen Decepticon and Autobot shells that littered the Ark corridors. Certain of these shells he avoided at all costs when travelling-- Megatron's especially. Primus knows what disgustingly boorish ideas he could pick up by stepping his toe in a river that stagnant. Soundwave's was not so bad, probably because of the talent they shared in looking into others' minds. Starscream made him shudder, not because of his backstabbing and duplicitous past with Megatron, but just for some of the buffoonish thoughts crammed into his little pin-head.   
Enough thinking about his near-dead brethren: Rhinox's mental absence concerned him. Damn... no connection to the Matrix, Parseltongue cursed, no communication with Rhinox if he's gone off again. Last time, the day after Primal's "departure" into the Matrix, Rhinox uploaded his entire consciousness into the Allspark in the form of a false "spark." Brilliant tactic, Parseltongue thought, and reminded himself to befriend the Rhino when the time was right. For now...   
Rhinox lay unconscious, still functional, but with a similar glow to the others he'd seen altered. He saw Terrorsaur fall into the lava as he occupied the mind of Tarantulas, sparkling somewhat, bathed in a blue aura. But Rhinox's glow differed. Chromatically, it lacked the blue markings of the first phase of "Transmetals," opting for a red tinge. A red tinge, he pondered, who else had glowed red...   
Dinobot... Cheetor... Oh, Primus, another of the second wave! Poor Rhinox. His mind cast about in the torpid sea of the Allspark, body plummetting into the depths of what the Rampage Syndrome will claim the moment the mind returns. Parseltongue took pity on Rhinox, but also noticed something. No mind to occupy the body, no spark to guide it, meant...   
Ambulation. Tangibility. Reality, at long last.   
No. Not a chance, he ordered himself, pushing his mind onto Megatron's in punishment. No way you're hurting Rhinox like that... and putting yourself at the risk of dying the moment Rhinox's mind returns to his body-- out of the question!   
Parseltongue agreed with himself, but still gazed forlornly at the empty shell, just lying there, ripe for pickings. Almost asking him to bring life to the dead form.   
The "Ghost" Seeker's thoughts were sundered when Rhinox's body stirred, and a familiar warmness flowed into the room. Shimmering and brilliant, an undulating mote of energy filtered itself through the purplish-green raawhide on Rhinox's chest.   
==Welcome back to the land of the living, Rhinox,== Parseltongue muttered inaudibly into the Maximal tinkerer's aural receptor.   
"Good to be back," the hunchbacked Transformer responded. "Parseltongue, ne?"   
==Got it in one, Roadbuster.==   
Rhinox arched a brow and snorted. "Funny you should mention that, Copperhead."   
==Ah, so you know! How'd you figure it out?==   
"Color schemes, for one... his chestplate matches that locked green Seeker's..."   
==No wonder you were the Axalon's science officer. You're sharp.==   
"Pointy horn, pointy mind," Rhinox chuckled, pinging a finger off the horn mounted on his shoulder.   
==How was the Matrix this time?==   
Rhinox's optics narrowed a bit. "I don't think you want to know..." he said, but continued the story anyway. Parseltongue didn't have to use his telepathy to tell Rhinox he wanted to know. "Even as a spark, floating around in what amounts to Cybertronian paradise, some individuals can be extremely uppity. An old Decepticon General-- Liege Obsidian, I think-- had led a swarm of dead Decepticon and Predacon spirits to the core, for no good reason. It wasn't as if he could do any damage to a noncorporeal plane of existance, so he was summarily ignored and flushed out into a new body. I found it kind of funny."   
==Obsidian was a jerk. Always trying to grab for power... I think Megatron got fed up and blasted him a few weeks before the Ark launch.==   
"I wouldn't be surprised." By now, Rhinox had sunk to a sitting position on the floor, legs crossed, listening intently to Parseltongue's words, trying, in his mind's eye, to locate the source of the thoughts. For naught, of course, since Parseltongue's ethereal consciousness had no form or focus; all the words, all the images, originated at the lain flat jet body in another chamber. "Tin grin over there seemed to be the kind that would shoot first and give orders second--"   
==Don't get 'The Overlord' wrong,== Parsel snickered. ==He had grand ideas, but his reach usually exceeded his grasp. This time, though, it looked to be a success. Don't tell me if he failed, it'd probably rip the time-space continuum to shreds.==   
Rhinox laughed out loud, his chuckle echoing around in the vacant control room. "Got any more hilarious war stories?"   
==Yes, but we're saving them. You have company arriving.==   
"I do?"   
==Yep... Mayhem and Copperhead, arriving at the front gate as we speak... I asked them here. Don't hurt Copper, he's turned over a new leaf.==   
"I'll believe that when I see it," the rhino grunted, straining to his feet under the bulk of the new form. "Slot, could... urg... the Vok... grrnt... have built the... by Primus... new bodies... gah!... any heavier?" Finally on his feet, Rhinox shakily made a few steps forward, his massive hooflike toes slamming against the floor with every step.   
  
The silver blast doors screeched open, admitting the Autobot sized dragon and his human-proportioned counterpart. Rhinox, not particularly pleased to see Copperhead, but humoring his newfound friend in Parseltongue, welcomed them both in.   
"Tyrannix, that you?"   
Mayhem nodded. "He's called Mayhem now," Copperhead interjected.   
"Call me what you will, I shall answer."   
"I see you're not the bot you used to be, big guy," Rhinox quipped.   
"Neither are you."   
He'd gone from cheerful, flying Copperhead all this way mere minutes beforehand, to this morose figure that stood before Rhinox now... and Rhinox knew it. He had that bipolar aura about him.   
Rampage's Curse again, no doubt.   
"Steeljaw, what of him?"   
Tyrannix shook his head. "Alive, but missing, to be certain. No worries. He can and will fight his way back if he needs to."   
"And the second Predacon?"   
"If she's dead," Copperhead sneered, "it'll be an improvement."   
"No, she's not dead either," Rhinox retorted. "I was the only one coming in from this temporal nexus." The second part Rhinox said to himself.   
"Temporal nexus?" Copperhead asked, intrigued.   
"Your sparks are all tagged with an atemporal code, from the moment of their extrusion from Vector Sigma to the instant they're shot back into the Matrix-- instantly recognizable as from the era you were born or re-born. The great Allspark accounts for timetravel in its construction." Amazed still at a construct he'd been studying for quite some time, Rhinox chuckled. "Wondrous device, the Matrix."   
Copperhead's eyes flashed violet a moment. "Heads up-- Birddog and legs are back."   
Rhinox sprung into action, pressing the blastdoor actuator again. "Welcome ba--" He looked at Blackarachnia's prone form lying in Silverbolt's arms. "Not her, too. Tyr, amp up the CR chamber. Copperhead, stay put. Silverbolt, follow me."   
The pandemonium that ensued shuffled Copperhead to a far wall, near the entrance to the Ark itself. "Just... stay put," he told himself, sliding down to a seat.   
==Hi there.==   
Copperhead blinked.   
==You alive in there, snakey?==   
Another blink, as if to drive the presence he knew he was not imagining, away.   
==Oh come now... You can hear me.==   
==I don't WANT to hear you. It freaked me out when you first spoke to me, and I fear for temporal stability if we keep this up.== The imprint of Copperhead's face within Parseltongue's mind bore a stern, disgusted expression. ==Leave me alone and go back into stasis lock.==   
A pause.   
==Can't. Already am-- this is pretty much my dreaming. Too bad it affects others as well.==   
==Then stop dreaming!==   
==I told you, I can't. You'll have to deal with this until either I come out of stasis lock or you leave the planet. I'd prefer the former... you make good company.==   
Another pause as Copperhead considered, expertly shielding his mind from Parseltongue's "dreamwalk".   
==Aren't you a bit disgusted,== Copper started after a moment, ==that I've fallen in love with a Maximal?==   
A brief pause later, and the answer was a gleeful ==No!==   
==Why not?== the organic asked.   
==Simply put, it's none of my business... in the two or so million solar cycles between our presents, I know I'll have changed dramatically. Who doesn't after a couple of eons, y'know? So he's an Autobot descended Convoy? I don't particularly care... I care that I'm happy now in whatever Primus hath wrought. What I'm not happy about is the fact you don't remember this conversation when you were in my place...==   
Copperhead smirked. ==Who's to say I don't?== he retorted.   
Parseltongue did not argue. ==Damn logic== was the only response for a few cycles.   
"She's going to be fine," Rhinox reported, patting Silverbolt on the arm. Copper stood again, dusting himself off, and joined the throng. "Nothing to worry about, really-- the healing factor should maintain her right now, and once she gets out, she'll be as good as new. Hopefully, her mind won't be as adversely affected."   
"Yes... hopefully. May I?" the birddog asked, moving toward the lone CR tank.   
"Be my guest," Rhinox replied, stepping to the side.   
The hissing of the released coolant and the rising door admitted a low slung metallic spider into the chamber.   
"What's everyone looking at?" she demanded, in a tone Silverbolt recognized as playful.   
"You... are more beautiful than before!" Bolt sighed, kneeling at her side. "It is good to see you well."   
"Well?" the mandibles mounted on her small head clicked. "I feel like the Nemesis just plowed headlong into me, and you say I'm well?!" The octet of optics narrowed in unison, then widened again. "I feel great!" After a moment, Blackarachnia belted out a shrill soprano "Maximize!" and leapt to a transformed state. "I look even better... I must say it's an improvement." She flung her arms around Silverbolt and kissed him with her newly rebuilt lips. The kiss lasted a good fifteen cycles, as the assemblage gawked at the two. "Stop yer starin'," she chuckled, releasing Silverbolt and looking around.   
Rhinox stood next to Tyrannix, the two TM2s stark opposites in color and size. She sized them both up approvingly. Rhinox's beast form head rested as his shoulder armor, twin horns driven out like nails at odd angles. Tyrannix had what appeared to be a bazooka slung over his right shoulder, with a dragon-head shaped barrel. Her eyes then fell on Copperhead, and she sneered.   
"I never liked you," she chuckled. "But we'll work something out. We're all of us Maximals now, no?"   
Copperhead was flabberghasted. Everything was screwed up. Blackarachnia, working things out? Rhinox, old friends with a Decepticon ghost? What next, Megatron trying to steal Megatron's spark? ***   
A driving beat, complex melody, and heavy-- HEAVY-- bass, set the mood for the afternoon. It was like a class reunion in the Maximal base, as Pantera had reached the shelter a few megacycles behind Cheetor, Nari, and Blancwulf.   
Then, Tigatron, ridden by the lithe avian femme Airazor, appeared out the blue to commiserate on the whole situation of the Beast Wars-- the ups and downs, highs and lows-- with Optimus and to impart some of the tactical data he'd gathered from the field.   
Blancwulf had broken out the boombox and cranked up the tunes, as was her wont, to an obscure Terran group (Is there any other kind? the others often wondered) by the name of Daft Punk.   
"Wasn't their best CD, but the only one I could get my hands on," she grinned, pulling Cheetor close for what she termed 'freakin'.' The cat's eyes widened in Blancwulf's fallen inhibitions, as she ground her skidplate against his leg, but he made very little protest.   
The rest were amused to the point of riotous laughter by Blancwulf's Terranisms, but not everyone was cheerful.   
Optimus Primal, for example, was disturbed.   
"I have always said that all are welcome here," he said to Copperhead, Mayhem, and Rhinox in the privacy of his quarters, "and I have made that fact clear by allowing Blackarachnia into the fold. But her situation is different from yours."   
Copperhead made a motion to speak, but Primal cut him off. "Hear me out on this; I'd like to finish what I say before you object."   
The snake nodded and fell silent again, though he knew Primal's words almost as intimately as Primal knew them.   
"You assaulted two of the most valued members of my crew; one of them is still unaccounted for. You made an attempt to obliterate every Maximal on this planet with extreme and unstoppable force--"   
"--and in Copperhead's defense, they failed!" Rhinox interjected. "The bomb wasn't even--"   
"Quiet, Rhinox!" Optimus barked, in a tone that stopped the gruff Maximal instantly. "Regardless of the device's failure, the intention was there. Pending investigation regardng the true nature of the machine, I request that you stay within the confines of Maximal Base; the moment you are exhonerated-- if that happens-- you shall be inducted fully into the Maximals."   
Copperhead nodded. No argument, just a short, low nod.   
"What about me, Commander Primal?"   
"You've been through a lot, Tyrannix; you require rest and recuperation. You are relieved of active duty for the time being, until you're feeling one hundred percent. Relax for a while; the war isn't going anywhere."   
Tyrannix nodded, the gold and silver Prime-styled helmet hiding the fearfulness and uncertainty he'd been feeling lo, these last few days. "I understand," was the grave reply.   
"You're of little use to us when you're not yourself, Tyrannix; you'd be of even less use if your apparent malaise led you to an ignoble end." Primal's gaze turned to Rhinox. "You two are dismissed; but don't stray far, I have assignments for both of you." Taking Copperhead's lead, Mayhem slunk out of Primal's chambers. Alone, Primal looked at Rhinox and chortled.   
"You look... different."   
Rhinox grinned. "I feel like I could take on the Tripredacus Council and all their agents single handed."   
"Glad to hear it... I understand you've been talking to ghosts?"   
He chuckled a bit, and replied. "Just Parseltongue... we've been having dialogue for a few weeks now. I used his consciousness as an anchor when I wanted to come back from the Matrix."   
"I see... put a stop to it, hmm?"   
"You're kidding?" Rhinox's smile fell flat.   
"Why would I joke about this? He's a Decepticon, in stasis, aboard the Ark. He could get ahold of tactical secrets and use them against us, before we're even born. It's bad enough what Cheetor and Dinobot did to the humans; the timeline must be preserved." By now, Rhinox noted, he was pounding a fist into his open palm for effect. That unerringly meant Primal's word was law.   
Rhinox hated-- HATED-- when superior logic prevailed over lesser logic. "Whatever you say, Optimus..." he grumbled, trundling out of the makeshift office/quarters.   
The mood in the grand room dropped by a factor of what had to be a thousand when the three Transmetals walked in, shoulders low, demeanors all soured.   
"Who put scraplets in your energon goodies?" Blancwulf asked, suffering an elbow jab to the side from her sister a moment later.   
Rhinox was silent. Mayhem was silent. Copperhead was passively screaming profanities into everyone's minds, except Primal's. The lighthearted response from Inuarai made Copper smile. "You dork, Primal always makes dunderheaded decisions, right Mamacat?"   
Pantera was not pleased. "This is no laughing matter... Predacons of his kind have no place among the Maximals."   
"Mamacat, remember what you sai--"   
"Blancwulf, close your snout before something you really regret exits it." Tera's lips had narrowed to a single black slit on her chin that appeared to be cut there with an energon blade. Her hue, normally a silvery blue, had gone totally pale, casting an impression of off-white to all at one angle, angry, boiling electric blue to another. With a whirr of the servos in her leg, Pantera stalked out of the grand room and into the corridor.   
"Musta hit a nerve," Copperhead quipped snidely. "Musta hit it really deep..."   
"That wasn't funny," Nari responded, mimicking her caretaker's rage (though nowhere near as intense), and ran to follow Pantera. 


	4. Something Different

Author's note: All characters are copyright their respective creators. I do not own Transformers and I am not affiliated with Hasbro or Takara, Mainframe or Alliance, nor should any affiliation be inferred, implied or assumed. Enjoy the fic. Historian's note: "Indeterminate Timeframe" events occur shortly after when "Master Blaster" and "Crossing the Rubicon" would have occured.   
  


**Year Of The Dragon: Being Part The Second of the Zodiac Arc   
Chapter Four**

  


****Earth, Indeterminate Timeframe**   
Silently, Sin, Waspinator, and Calamity moved closer to the Ark, followed a few meters behind by the bronze Transmetallic dinosaurian form of Megatron.   
*\We shall be quick,/* Megatron ordered. */Sin, you have the Ark codes?\*   
"Affirmative," the moth answered. "But I'm picking up a lot of Maximal signatures from inside... seven or eight, at least, and three or four on the ridge above. Might be a bit tough entering."   
*/That, Sin, is what the three of you are for... diversionary tactics are rule number one in the book of Predacon strategy.\*   
Sin smiled grimly, knowing full well Megatron's idea.   
  
The blast door burst open, allowing the flood of Maximals onto the field. Behind them, the Autoguns whirred and clicked, trying to find their targets, but none appeared. "I think we've been had," Tigatron growled after a moment.   
"One way or another," a voice behind him snarled before the body attached bore out of the ground and grabbed him around the neck.   
"Unhand me!" the white tiger snarled, clawing at the wrists binding him. "Maximals!" he choked.   
Airazor turned around, claw gun drawn, but there was no way in the pit she could fire and accurately hit Calamity. "Let... him... go!" she screamed, leaping into the air and divebombing toward the grappling pair. She knew, with her slight frame, if she crasahed into Tigatron, there'd be little damage, but if she could undermine Calamity's footing...   
A mighty crash brought Tigatron down on top of his assailant, pinning her. With his feline speed, he righted himself on top of her, grabbing her about the neck with one massive hand. "You've brought friends!" he roared, lifting her high above his head. "Predacons never work alone!"   
Calamity merely gagged. A laserbolt to Tigatron's back confirmed the assumption.   
There holding Airazor about the neck in a similar fashion as Calamity had caught him, was Waspinator, eyes glowing, that stupid expression hiding a sinister demeanor below.   
"Ztripeybot let go of Anteater... or Wazzzpinator shoot more!"   
Tigatron threw Calamity to the ground roughly, and he was sure she bounced. Waspinator did the same with Airazor, evening the odds. "Take the female, I shall handle the wasp," Tigatron ordered quietly as Airazor took her place at his side. The femme falcon nodded and rushed forward alongside her love.   
Elsewhere, Sin was having troubles. Cheetor, Blancwulf, and Rhinox had triple-teamed her. "Thank Primus for wings," she muttered to herself, leaping above the fray to fire Curse Ring after Curse Ring at her opponents.   
Rhinox was not giving up. The immense Holy Chainguns of Primus he wielded prior to his being transmetallized had also been upgraded. Two sets of four spiked maces rotated in alternate directions on razor disks as the chainguns fired. An extra four barrels had attached themselves to each weapon, and the butt was now studded with energon spikes. Subtlety and Rhinox did not go well together.   
One of the chaingun's quarrels shot through her wing, sending her spiralling down and crashing into Wulfie, grinding her into the dirt and deftly flipping off. The energon knives untethered themselves from her collarpiece, blazing blue as she twirled them. "Ok, honey, close quarters." The two circled each other, a deadly snarl pasted across Blancwulf's faceplate, a sinister grin on Sin's.   
"Wouldn't have it any other way." The two leapt at each other, Blancwulf's claws shredding Sin's other delicate wing, the energon knives Sin held cleaving at Blancwulf every chance they got. Sin put a foot against the wolf's midsection and pushed out again, knocking Blancwulf back, but still the Maximal came, in a rage as she charged. Sin easily sidestepped, and shoved her foot onto Blancwulf's skidplate, knocking her to the ground. "Little girl, learn from your elders."   
The energon studs from Rhinox's chaingun broadsided her, knocking her flat.   
"Yeah... learn from your elders," Rhinox chuckled as Sin went into stasis lock.   
Sin, Calamity and Waspinator had been ruses, of course, allowing the gold and violet Predacon to make his way into the Maximal base. A few heavy energon bolts to important items that remained in the broken bridge portion of the Axalon, and Megatron jetted his way across the lava field to the front door of the Ark.   
It was locked, of course. Locked out to all but those with the codes. Megatron did not have the Autobot keycodes to open the doors, of course, but Blackarachnia did...   
"Computer," he whispered into his micro wrist-comp. "Holochip zeta." The binding that held his tail in place in beast mode swung around, a compartment on it sliding open to reveal a silvery holographic display chip. A grin played across Megatron's normally scowling visage, and he brought his segmented laser cutlass from subspace, willing it to do the trick it had played before, the weapon end retracting and bringing out a pair of spinner clamps. The disk seated itself in the middle, and began to spin, bringing forth a holographic representation of the black and gold Blackarachnia. Green beams shot from the faux's optics, into the dataport, and after a few moments of whirring and clicking, the Ark's hatch trundled open.   
"Excellent..." As the holo dissipated, Megatron replaced the cutlass and tromped forward, chuckling frenetically as he searched out his quarry.   
  
There it lay, seemingly dead, but with a pulsating energy that could be discerned with the right tools, or the right intuition.   
"Great and mighty Megatron," Megatron whispered, depressing the release button on the Decepticon's chestplate. The panel slid open, revealing a silently pulsating blue orb... the Spark of Megatron the Primeslayer.   
It was like barbed wire, the snaking tendril that erupted from the Predacon Megatron's spark chamber. It actively sought out a new spark, slithering this way and that until it clamped its spiked hide around the mote in the Primeslayer's chest. "Yess..." Megatron chuckled. The spark entering his body tickled somewhat as it the tendril replaced in a secondary holding chamber.   
"No, Megatron," echoed a voice in the corridor.   
Megatron stood, feeling quite a bit more powerful and a hundred times as confident, and looked at Tyrannix.   
"You truly wish to die?"   
He replied harshly, "No."   
"Too bad..." Megatron was quick-- quicker than usual-- to draw and fire his cutlass, but Mayhem proved even quicker, dodging the bolt with what seemed to be a flicker of motion. Another bolt, the same result. Three more, and before Megatron realized it, Tyrannix stood directly in front of him. In a flash, Megatron was lifted by his face and flung into the far wall, crashing into it and leaving a tyrannosaur shaped dent. As he charged, he shouted, "How you're able to dodge my fire is beyond me, Maximal, but once I..." But as soon as he would have struck, the dragon-winged Maximal had disappeared again, and Megatron felt his presence behind him. He then felt the presence of an immense fist pounding Megatron to the floor.   
The strategic-minded Predacon then did the most strategically-minded thing he could think of: he ran.   
Out of the Ark, with no Tyrannix following him, Megatron stopped to praise his success at procuring the most coveted of trophies, even moreso than the Autobot Matrix of Leadership: he had the soul of the Primeslayer beating in his chest.   
"Going somewhere?"   
Megatron whirled to see none other than Tyrannix standing at the doorway to the Ark.   
"Blast you, Maximal, will I never be rid of you?!"   
Tyrannix silently shook his head and flickered to Megatron's side. "I suppose I should feel consigned to my fate, then," he muttered, slowly activating his cutlass, but setting it to another function. In a display of speed that seemed to match Tyrannix's own ability, Megatron raised his cutlass, jaws open, and flashed a beam of purple light at the dragon's face, right before he was launched into the lava field beyond.   
The Predacon general screamed as the molten rock overtook him, pulling him under into the embrace as warm as a smelter's. Tyrannix was... pleased?... to see Megatron died, but it felt as if something was wrong. His intuitions had usually paid off before, but of late they'd been somewhat lax, and Tyrannix decided that this was another instance of overheightened paranoia.   
He turned away from the lava pool and muttered, "Megatron is dead," then started back for the main door.   
Not so... not so at all... thought the floating Megatron as his body dissolved in the lava. Never dead... no... I shall rise again, as I have before... yess! His hoverfans burst forth, melting into wings that shot from his back. The Tyrannosaur head clamped between his shoulders burst from its moorings and extended, brightening from its deep purple hue to bright crimson, the lava dying it to its new color. The spindly, useless forearms attached to Megatron's shoulder-pads extended too, the stubby silver claws stretching and melting into long black talons. The purple claws on his feet, used primarily for traction, also mutated into razor sharp black spurs. In a shifting mass of molten and hardening metal, the beast was fully transformed. Upward it shot, its head bursting from the lava field surface, wings spraying molten rock and ember everywhere. With a mighty roar from the elongated, fanged dragon snout, Megatron caught the attention of the departing Tyrannix. "Never dead! I am... ETERNAL!" The wings spread more as he let fly a burst of liquid fire that scorched the ground at Tyrannix's feet.   
"I see you have grown weary... you barely missed that shot. But I..." Megatron roared, wings ablaze with the light of the lava below, "I have only just begun to fight!" The dragon dipped its head and soared downward at Tyrannix, but as the Gold Dragon sidestepped, Megatron's jaws clipped his wing, crumpling the metal and tearing the flesh. "We all get tired," Megatron roared with laughter, "but perhaps you... should take a long hot bath." The dragon circled around, but Tyrannix was even slower still, this time. Megatron caught him full force with his rear talons, lifting him into the air and flying over the lava pit. "If I let go, you'll be too weak to even spread your wings," Megatron shouted.   
"We'll see..." Tyrannix responded, not even offering any resistance.   
"Your unwillingness to fight is... unconvincing. Perhaps putting you in the lava is exactly the opposite of what I should be doing... Dragons of your caliber hate ice..." Megatron swooped back to the island in the lava and dropped quickly, grinding Tyrannix into the pumice floor. "Ice..." Megatron lifted off again in a scirocco of embers and ash, to prepare for another strike. The head lowered, drew itself back like a bowstring, and threw forth a voluminous blast of superchilled air that struck Tyrannix's midsection like a comet.   
The Maximal screamed in agony, drowning out the echoing laughter of Megatron in a symphony of anguish.   
"RELEASE HIM!" came a shout from the Ark's doorway. There, puny and frail, stood his former lieutenant, Copperhead, upgraded-- if such a word could be applied-- and pathetically furious.   
"Little worm, there is no way you can harm me..."   
"Indeed?" Copperhead chuckled. Soon, pouring from the Ark, came the forms of dozens upon dozens of Autobot warriors, lead by the immense First Convoy, Optimus Prime himself. Behind him, Megatron could recognize the shapes of Ironhide, Wheeljack, Bumblebee... all characters he'd read about in history books; some of the greatest warriors in Cybertronian history.   
"The entire Maximal defense fleet could not stop me when I escaped with the Golden Disks," Megatron chuckled, "what makes you think a tiny band of understrengthed Autobots could?"   
A searing pain running through Megatron's mind, the consciousnesses of a dozen or more sleeping, send the transmetallic dragon crashing to the stone floor. "What... are you... doing?!" Megatron howled.   
"Presenting you the minds of all those you seek to destroy... placing their souls on your conscience." The illusory Autobot band dissipated, as did the horrible pressure placed on Megatron's core processor. "That is what I am doing." Copperhead stood at Tyrannix's feet, wielding the remnants of his beast form-- transformed into a seven-foot long, axe-bladed staff-- above his head. He brought the tip, a gleaming metal tuning fork, down onto the ice, shattering the substance immediately with the high frequencies. "Are you all right?" Copperhead asked to the rising Tyrannix.   
"Let me... destroy him..." the Maximal roared, but Copper put a hand up to stop him.   
"As much as I'd like to see that, I noticed something when I scanned his brain... his spark and Megatron's are linked. Should you destroy him-- extinguish the Predacon spark-- the Decepticon spark dies too, and time space will be altered irrevocably."   
"The worm is correct," Megatron laughed, getting to his feet. "Kill me, kill history... and yourselves. The choice is yours." The red dragon reared up on its hind legs and roared, its parts breaking their seals and reconfiguring themselves. The mighty, claw-tipped tail moved up, revealing the visored face of Megatron. The large orange globe-- the storehouse of the Primeslayer's spark-- shifted, becoming a chestplate beneath the dragon-tailed head. The wings flipped over, retaining their draconian imagery, and two arms sprouted on the sidss of the newly unveiled robot form-- on the left, the head and neck of the beast, seemingly with a mind of its own, and on the right, a normal arm covered with the metallic belly plating left over from the beast. "You have insured my defeat this day, but I warn you: this war has not ended! It will never end!" The beast took to the air, firing the ice beam from the dragon head before Copper and Tyrannix, trapping them. Returning to beast mode, Megatron took wing and flew off.   
  
A roar sounded, and the blast doors swung open, broken from their hinges. "Sin, Waspinator, Calamity, to me!" he bellowed, roaring a warning to the five Maximals engaged in battle. The three insects were freed from their grapples, and those that could, took wing after the dragon. Those unable were taken up in the beast's grip and ferried away.   
"Should we follow?" Blancwulf asked as Rhinox helped her up.   
"No... he's far too powerful for any of us to stand much of a chance," the elder replied, patting Blancwulf on the back.   
Copperhead walked through the battered door and took in his comrades. "You all look like hell," he joked. "You should get back inside."   
Rhinox nodded. "Copper, has anyone seen Primal?"   
The snake shook his head. "Not since our ill-fated conference... I don't even know if he's in the Ark."   
Indeed, the Maximal general was nowhere to be found, either in the Axalon's remains or the Ark proper. Not even the scanners-- what remained of them after Megatron's tantrum-- could locate his communcations signal.   
Pantera was gone as well.   
"Slag... the comm tracker was one of Megatron's first targets... Primal and Elder Tera could be on the other side of the planet and we wouldn't be able to find them. Copperhead..." Rhinox spun in his chair to face the ex-Predacon.   
"No. Already tried." Of course he knew what Rhinox was about to ask. He was, after all, a telepath. "They're either shielding themselves from me, or..."   
"I hate the 'or'," Rhinox groaned.   
  
It wasn't the 'or', thank the Matrix. Just as Rhinox said, they were on the other side of the planet.   
"You got a communique from home?" Primal asked, landing just outside Pantera's junked starhopper. "Maximize!" he shouted once the elder exited his cockpit.   
"As much of a communique as 'sending' could be..."   
"But you confirmed it as a signal from Cybertron... with Maximal Council record tags?"   
"Yeah... fat lot of good it does us, though, if there's no way to respond."   
"Like hell there's no way to respond. We could send a message to the Autobot Temporal Control..."   
"Autobot Temporal Control hasn't been established yet," she muttered. "Not for another two thousand stellar cycles or so. Remember, at this point in time, the Decepticon Spacebridge was only a pipe dream. Unless we can get ahold of some transwarp cells..."   
"What about the one in your starhopper?"   
"Slagged the moment I crashed. It's still got all the energon required to operate, but some of the connectors were damaged... too dangerous to use now."   
Primal nodded grimly. "Is there a way to remodulate a communications packet so it can't be received until our era?"   
"No," Pantera replied, but then her optics widened. "But... there is a way! We just send it with a Maximal encryption algorithm. It can't be deciphered for another two and a half million stellar cycles, and when it's finally opened, it'll tell them where and when we are. Oh, Optimus, you're a genius."   
Primal looked at Pantera oddly. "It was your idea."   
She shook her head. "You made that remodulation suggestion-- if you hadn't, there's no slottin' way I would have..." Tera's aural pricked up and she took a defensive pose.   
"Something wrong?"   
"Maybe," she whispered. "There shouldn't be any Transformers around here for megaklicks..."   
Primal stood stock still, listening, but didn't hear a thing. "You sure something's nearby?"   
The bushes behind Primal began to rustle a bit more audibly, now, and the large Maximal turned around to see them part.   
"Hi!" a youthful voice spoke at Primal's feet.   
The gigantic Maximal looked down to see a very small animal-- compared to him, at least-- crawling across his toes. "Uh... hello..." Optimus replied.   
"Skyfire... Maximize!" The creature leapt into the air, a fluffy, feathered ball of bird with an oddly reptilian tail, and hit the ground a short and skinny robot.   
"Hello... where did you come from?"   
"I dunno," Skyfire responded. "One second I'm at the Mall in Cybertropolis, the next, in some freaky jungle somewhere... it's muggy here."   
"Wait... you came here from Cybertron?" Primal asked.   
"Optimus, get over here, quick!" called Pantera from the cockpit of her crashed ship.   
"Follow me," Primal ordered, turning on his heel and going to join Tera. Skyfire was shortly behind, almost running to keep up with Primal's pace. "What is it?"   
"Full communication with Cybertron, that's what! The commboard just suddenly... lit up with traffic!"   
Primal looked at the board. "Open a channel," he ordered. Tera complied, pressing the key to send a transmission. "This is Optimus Primal of the MEV Axalon to anyone who can hear this transmission."   
Static for a moment as the two of them looked impatiently at the transceiver. Then, a voice.   
*\Op Primal, ya say?/* came a voice on the other end. Optimus nearly jumped for joy.   
"Yes... to whom am I speaking?"   
*\This is Hawksbill Magnus of the MDV Ophiacus... where are ya? I'm not getting a return coordinate on the comm./*   
"It's a long story, Captain Hawksbill," Optimus responded. "Get word to the C.O.E. that the Axalon and its crew are safe, but lost!"   
*\Understood! Sending a transmission as we speak./* Over the open line, Primal and Pantera listened to Magnus send out the communique. *\This is the Ophiacus to Maximal base./*   
//*Lionspaw here*\\ came the reply, if a bit garbled.   
*\Got someone you might want to talk to on the other end of my comm, Special,/* Magnus chuckled. *\Go ahead, Op./*   
Pantera smiled. Primal smiled. Skyfire twiddled his thumbs impatiently.   
"Shock Special, you old energon sink," Optimus chortled, "hpw're things at Lionspaw?"   
//*Optimus Primal?!*\\ Special choked over the line. Regaining her composure, she continued. //*Glitch my circuits, where are you?*\  
"Would you believe me if I said the Ark?"   
//*Slot no,*\\ was the jovial reply.   
"Good... I'm actually about 500 klicks out. The transwarp explosion sent us back in time a 2 million years, give or take a millennium."   
Laughter from the other end lifted Optimus's spirit a bit more. //*Ain't that a kick in the skids, huh Mag?*\  
Magnus responded in the affirmative from the other side. "So..." Primal started. "Rescue operation?"   
//*Been underway quite some time. The problem was finding you... got twenty billion stel of history to go through, y'know, past and future... Any idea as to your exact temporal nexus?*\  
Primal answered with a no, but offered his best guess. "I'd say right at the beginning of the 3rd Great War, on Terra."   
//*We'll do what we can to find you guys... be safe, ok? Got any battle logs to transmit? Lionspaw's been boring since Drexus Prime got promoted.*\  
Primal looked at Tera. Drexus Prime... on the Council?   
"You're kidding... Drex?"   
//*Took Elder Tera's spot... Beamer Magnus took over for Elder Steeljaw.*\  
Oh, what a world, Tera chuckled to herself. She'd have to pummel Drexus Prime when she got home.   
//*It might be some time before we come to your rescue, Op... Transwarp's a tricky thing; too much of it and space-time collapses, ya know?*\  
Optimus nodded. "We'll try and hold out 'till then. Transmitting our battle logs now, descending order."   
With a button press, a data stream sent itself through space-time and lodged itself in the Lionspaw communications buffer.   
//*Got 'em...*\\ Special made a surprised squawk. //*You guys are going to have a --- of explaining --- when you--- home!*\\ she shouted. The signal had started to degrade.   
"I think our window's closing," Tera growled.   
"Listen, Special, Mag, whatever's allowing us to communicate with you is going down the tubes."   
*/Okay, Op...\* Hawksbill's voice crackled. */We won't--- forget you...\*   
With that, Hawksbill Magnus's voice fizzled out into static, and the comm board went dark again.   
"Going home," Optimus sighed. "After all this time, we finally got through to Maximal command."   
Pantera nodded. "Where'd the kid go?" she asked, looking around. Skyfire had disappeared into the forest.   
  
The speed was nice to have, even in this form, he thought. If he'd only been nearer a more powerful beast, things would definitely be different. An even faster beast mode, more powerful, with a better latent ability. Though the potential to petrify with a look, and that little tweak the Maximal gryphon had offered, were good things to have. "I'll simply bide my time among these peons," he muttered, leaping over a felled branch. "Then..." A disturbing chuckle broke out among the forest, scattering flocks of birds from their perches, and warning woodland creatures this was not the kind of beast to be trifling with.   
  
"Skyfire?" Primal called into the woods, primitively cupping his hands to his lips for amplification. For some reason, the moment the comm between times had faded out, so had their interlinks. Verbal communication was all that would work. "Skyfire?!" he bellowed again. Pantera had gone off, stalking him silently, her own brand of search-and-rescue underway. Optimus needed to stay near the junked hopper, just in case the communications array kicked in again, but the chances of that, Pantera calculated, were pathetically slim. "Blast it," he muttered.   
  
Free as a bird, she thought. Wish I'd never run into these goons... Wish... no, he's too important to me. Haven't seen him of late, though... worriesome. "Big Blue," she muttered. "Where are you?"   
The sound of something closing in alerted her again. "There you are," she thought, leaping from her treelimb lookout straight into the kid's path.   
"Going somewhere, flyboy?" she chuckled, transforming rapidly and blocking the way.   
"Just out on a sightseein' tour, ma'am," the kid replied, shifting to robot mode and folding his hands behind him politely. "Sorry if I worried you."   
"Be sure to tell someone next time you want to run off, got it?" Pantera scolded, remembering all the times she'd yelled at Inuarai and Blancwulf and... Jaxyl... for disobeying her. Another kid... maybe she'd be able to lighten up again. Something about this kid, though... something didn't quite seem right to her. "Follow me," she ordered, returning to beast mode and stalking off. The kid followed at her heels, not daring to run off... something about her seemed familiar in exactly the same fashion.   
"Bide your time," he repeated internally. "Bide your time." 


	5. Something Unexpected

Year of the Dragon

Author's note: All characters are copyright their respective creators. I do not own Transformers and I am not affiliated with Hasbro or Takara, Mainframe or Alliance, nor should any affiliation be inferred, implied or assumed. Enjoy the fic. Historian's note: "Indeterminate Timeframe" events occur shortly after when "Master Blaster" and "Crossing the Rubicon" would have occured.   
  


**Year Of The Dragon: Being Part The Second of the Zodiac Arc   
Chapter Five**

  


****Earth, Indeterminate Timeframe**   
The chronometer listed the time as 600 hours. It felt like later, for some reason. The sun had already mounted a good clip into the sky, irradiating the landscape in a reddish-yellow glow.   
"Baby sun," Fangstriker chuckled. "Lock..."   
The bear-sized hyena snorted and rolled over to the other side, still fast asleep and, judging from the twitching of his paws, dreaming heavily. A poke to his ribs send the creature twitching, grumbling his way awake.   
"Damn... I was just... killing Renegade." The hyena's optics opened slightly, squinting against the rays. "What's up?   
"We fell asleep... it's morning, and Megatron... Megs won't be pleased."   
"Ah hush... it'll be ok. Lizard-lips isn't even at the Darkside. He was planning on taking a sojourn with the bugs last night."   
"Oh... s'pose he's back at the ship now? It was last night."   
Lockjaw grunted again, and rolled to his belly, struggling under his mass to his feet. "Gotta lose some of this," he complained, craning his neck for a look at the rest of his body. "Not good for a fighter to have an extra few..."   
"Quiet. I smell something..."   
It was Dinobot. Crimson and bone, unmistakeably transmetallic. Unquestioningly, the snitch himself. "No use hiding, bones," Fangstriker called, allowing the creature to reveal itself.   
With a raspy metallic growl, the raptor emerged from behind his mask of foliage, certainly unhappy with the situation. "You dishonor the Predacons in your tryst here... report to base or Megatron shall know of your dereliction."   
"You and what army?" Fang snarled, bearing her teeth and flattening her ears.   
With a click and a hum, Fangstriker was informed of the army. "Who needs an army when a single nuclear warhead will do?" chortled the gravelly tone of Rampage.   
"Should'a known..." Fang cursed, her back straightening and ears returning to normal. Play dead, girl... that's right. Forget fighting, it's always counterproductive. Fangstriker's logic circuits got the better of her emotions grid this time, but sooner or later, logic would fall to passion. Soner, hopefully rather than later. "What do you want with us?" she asked.   
"I was simply looking for a tension release... Dinobot here had to follow me or face horribly wrenching pain to his spark." Rampage's chuckle had begun to trod on Fangstriker's nerves. Lockjaw, on the other hand, was ucharacteristically lucid and aloof at the moment.   
"So blowing up your fellow Preds is a good stress reliever? What about the Box?"   
Rampage pointed a clawed finger at Dinobot. "Do recall, the Box was emptied into his stinking carcass."   
Curses, foiled again... passion vs. logic? Let's go with logic, mmkay? Fangstriker swore at herself mentally.   
"So I suppose, now that the Box isn't in the picture anymore..." Fangstriker tested.   
"I could make you wet yourself in fear whilst I point my cannon at your head." Rampage lowered the barrel to the ground. "Or I could let you go with a warning not to cross me..."   
Rampage turned, holstering the five-foot long cannon in its subspace hutch, and took a few steps. Fangstriker and Lockjaw, side by side in beast mode, issued low growls as they stalked past the crab.   
"Don't come back now, y'hear?" the King Crab joked, waving them away sarcastically.   
"Would't dream of it," Fangstriker snarled.   
The tiny one and her companion, still nowhere near as large as Rampage himself, left behind, the Crab made his way... elsewhere. He knew not where he was headed, but away from here was definitely tops on his list.   
As was away from the Darkside. Anywhere near Megatron would be a blessing for him, yet he felt oddly... compelled.   
"You will return with me to genuflect for the mighty Megatron," Dinobot rumbled. "Or you shall face Megatron... and myself... in combat."   
Rampage snickered, though he knew he was beaten. "And destroy the two of you? Sounds like my idea of a good time."   
Dinobot took a few clicking steps forward on the rocky ground and stopped cold, sniffing the air.   
"Him again," he snarled, head swaying as he sniffed the air. "Dinobot, beast mode!" A shrill cry broke the muddy dawn air, followed by the sounds of metal and flesh rearranging themselves. "Show yourself, Steeljaw! Show yourself or I shall..."   
"Shall what? You can't find me, you can't even touch me. But apparently I only fool the senses of touch and sight. Your nose caught me."   
"That is not all that shall catch..."   
Steeljaw's ghostly voice huffed. "Enough with the death threats, Dinobot!" he barked, clearly exasperated. "You'd be lucky if I even showed myself in full! You'd be dead before I even apparated."   
Dinobot lowered his head as if ready to strike, pulling his nonexistant lips back over his ivory teeth in a snarl more menacing than usual. "Show yourself... fight honorably."   
Rampage found this entire situation extraordinarily funny, and made his amusement known with a dignified snort.   
"Do you have something to say," Dinobot hissed, "appetizer?"   
"You're poking at thin air, but I can see him clear as the antennae on my head. He's leaning against that treetrunk right there, arms crossed and smirking like he knows what he's talking about... repugnant bastard," the crab spat.   
Dinobot whirled around but still saw nothing.   
"He's afraid of me," Rampage muttered, "that's why he's visible. Fear... fear makes for excellent radioscopy."   
"An item you could have informed me of sooner, crustacean," Dinobot muttered, lunging at the nearest treetrunk but finding his toeclaws passing through the aether and burying themselves in the wood. "Feh!" he snarled, dislodging his talons and turning back toward Rampage. "Find him!"   
"Behind you, sword brandished, waiting to strike."   
Lightning fast, Dinobot's low slung raptor body swung around, tail sweeping a broad swath, but still making contact with only the vapor.   
"Damnation!" Dinobot screamed, scratching at the stones below with his toeclaw. "Show yourself, you dishonorable cur!"   
A humming noise arose from above and behind, and Dinobot looked up to see a silver and blue blur descending on him from a treebranch. With a loud thud and the scream of a blade being unleashed, Dinobot was on the floor, pinned, the Grim Lach's flat pressed against his neck.   
"Cur's a word for dogs, Dinobutt," he chuckled. "And this cat doesn't like the comparison." Steeljaw hefted the studded pommel of the Lach into the air and, after a moment's hover, the butt of the hilt came crashing down, crushing Dinobot's arterial main fluid line. The bone steel raptor was out cold and Rampage was chuckling madly.   
"Oh, the pain! You honor me, kitten!" he roared cheerfully. "What a feast!"   
"Sick bastard," Steeljaw snarled, returning to his invisible hiding place. Rampage's beady green optics were still set on his position, something that unnerved Steeljaw in all his confidence. "You'll be next." With a catlike roar and the sound of rustling branches, the Maximal was gone, leaping through the trees with more grace than the crab could muster.   
"We'll meet again," Rampage chortled, "as sure as I've used a stupid cliché."  


***

"Can you work a little faster?" Skyfire whined impatiently. "I'm about to start molting."   
"Patience, little one," Rhinox chuckled, looking over the interface slot welded onto Skyfire's arm. "This tech is amazing... who built it?"   
"I don't remember. It's always been there."   
Inuarai scoffed, looking over his physical workup records. "Your spark's older than your shell, Skyfire," she noted, "by a couple dozen stel."   
Only a couple of dozen, Skyfire mused internally. I'd've thought several million, but... whatever. Morons.   
"It happens," he responded. "I was... in an accident... as a kid, and they moved my spark."   
As Rhinox continued to examine the interface attached to Skyfire's wrist, Primal returned from his office.   
"Any luck identifying him?" the Maximal leader asked, crossing his arms.   
"He's Skyfire of Beta Cybertronia. The Ax's dossiers list him as a third class ensign signed aboard the MDV Trifecta..."   
"That's Firedare Magnus's ship, isn't it?" Primal interjected.   
Rhinox nodded and continued. "But, since we left before the Trifecta was even out of spacedock, we have no idea what happened to it, or how he got here."   
Optimus Primal knelt and looked Skyfire straight in the optic, a cold glare playing from the hot lava field nearby. "How did it happen, Skyfire? You're hiding something from us, I know it. I don't want to confine you to quarters, or throw you in the brig, but you'll leave me no choice if you're not forthcoming."   
Skyfire's expression soured and his gaze turned as cold as Optimus's. "You really want to know? You want me to tell you the fate of the future?" The words, spoken coldly and without emotion, held as much weight as a sledgehammer to his core processor. Destructive rage seemed to dance behind every syllable, hidden discretely within his almost amicable dialogue.   
Optimus nodded. "Tell me what's happened."   
Skyfire complied.   
"Galvatron, highest Liege of the Predacons, was searching for a way to grant himself dominion over Cybertron. He'd succeeded, having located three icons of Primus's power-- a shield, a helm, and the coveted Sword."   
Optimus Primal knew the impetus behind the words 'Sword of Primus'-- in all legends, the Sword of Primus was the gold enshrouded gem known also by the name Matrix.   
"He gained them all and made his wish at the sepulchre of the First Convoy." Skyfire smirked and chuckled grimly. "Little did he know that Primus Himself would take control of the First Convoy... so rose the Angel Convoy to battle the Dark God Unicron."   
Primal's mech fluid froze upon hearing the name Unicron. Something about the child before him-- speaking in such an exalted tone, with such ornate dialect-- bore an inherent deadliness he'd never met among the younger generation, as if he were someone else entirely.   
"So Unicron and Primus grappled then as they had for aeons before, and will for aeons to come, and Unicron was overcome, as it always happens. The consequence of His Vanquishment shattered the fabric of time itself, sending us to all points of history. I do not know the fates of my comrades."   
Primal's spark leapt.   
"So YOU'RE responsible for the atemporal anomolae!" Rhinox declared. "I knew there had to be some sort of chronometric interference involved. Cheetor, switch the communications array online. Inuarai, open a comm channel to Cybertron's location."   
Inuarai and Cheetor worked on opposite sides of the console at the tasks Rhinox had assigned while Primal continued Skyfire's interrogation.   
"This is the crew of the MEV Axalon to anyone who can hear this..." Inuarai began.   
"Who was aboard the Trifecta with you?" Primal demanded.   
"We've recently found the capacity to traverse space-time in our trasmissions--"   
"Do you know if anyone else was stranded in this timeframe?" he asked again.   
"--and we are requesting anyone who can pinpoint our exact temporal nexus to send assistance as soon as possible--" she continued.   
*/Axalon?*\ belched a staticky transmission through the speaker.   
"Hello?" Inuarai queried.   
*/You're barely coming through, Axalon!*\ the communications array sputtered.   
Skyfire stood up and mantled his crimson and white wings against his chest. "The captain, his senior crew-- Fathom, Drachen, Kierus, Bash," he listed, turning to Inuarai's position and placing his hand on the small antenna array.   
"Can you hear us now?" he quipped.   
*/Yes! Much better now!*\ the other end reported. Inuarai looked up at Skyfire with a scowl, though she couldn't contemplate why.   
"Please identify yourself," she ordered.   
*/MDV Trifecta II here. Captain Sixleague Magnus speaking.*  
Primal raised an eyebrow. Sixleague Magnus? A glance at Pantera told him she had no idea who that particular Magnus was, either.   
"I'm a crewbot of the MEV Axalon--" Nari started. A snort from the other end stopped her. "What is it?"   
*/The Axalon was lost decades ago. Never recovered, either. You're full of slag.*  
"Check my commtag, sir."   
A moment passed and Magnus returned.   
*/You're cloning the tag,*\ he responded indignantly. */Get off this channel or I'll alert the CoE of the violation.*  
The comm abruptly cut out as Sixleague Magnus shut off the incoming.   
"Slag!" Inuarai cursed, slamming her fist on the panel. "So close, too."   
Rhinox placed his massive hand on Inuarai's shoulder comfortingly. "Don't worry, kid, Hawksbill Magnus said he'd be sending out a search party soon enough. We'll get found one of these days... or find another way home."   
Inuarai nodded defeatedly. "Yeah... one of these days..."

***

Elsewhere in the Ark, Copperhead sat, a feeling of helplessness overcoming him. The effects of his transmetallization had worn off, and he was faced with the grim reality of who he was now: neither a Maximal nor a Predacon. Not Decepticon any longer, but not an Autobot by any stretch of the imagination. He felt very grey. Grey, he thought, not only in allegiance, but in mind, and in body. He realized that with his precursor's existence in this timeframe, his spark was not young. Somehow, in those millennia on millennia, Parseltongue, Fangrel, Skystryke and Copperhead had managed to survive, under one name or another. Snakes and survival, partners till the end of time.   
"Something's bothering you," came the deep tone of Mayhem's vocoder.   
"Possibly," Copperhead replied, chin in hand. "What's going on, anyway?"   
"Well, the others found a kid--"   
"No, I know everything about that two-faced little charlatan... Primal's in for a shock. That's not important, though... not pertinent at least. Who are we? You got reprogrammed when the wave hit, and I've lost my place among the Preds." Copper's eyes narrowed and widened as if to blink something away. Tears, perhaps?   
"I am a Maximal and shall always pledge allegiance to the Maximals... yet, somehow now, the allegiance seems empty. You seem to be all that matters."   
Copperhead smirked somewhat at the sentiment. "If you're going to be mushy about it."   
Mayhem crouched very low before the much smaller snakebot, so they were face to face. The plate that normally covered Mayhem's chin-- a copper colored representation of the mask of the Convoy Knights-- slid away to reveal a pair of smiling lips.   
"Hello, Little Snake," he chuckled.   
"I didn't know you could do that," Copper laughed, reaching a hand up to touch the dragon-bot's face, moving his fingertips slowly down the bridge of his broad, almost muzzle-like nose, to his cheekbones, lined with the edges of the faceplate, and on down, brushing the tips of his fingers over Mayhem's lips, then caressing his chin, before falling off and landing on the rising and falling collarbone of the Maximal.   
"I did," he smiled, leaning in and pressing his lips to Copperhead's.   
The kiss lasted no more than a few seconds, which seemed to stretch, for the two of them, into a blissful eternity. As they parted, their optics wide, both smiled and began to laugh quietly.   
"I... I didn't know I was gay until a few years ago," Copperhead began. "It never occured to me that I could even feel for another 'bot in any way other than malice and a lust for destruction, the perverted pleasure I got from torture, but then I realized why I'd been chasing Pantera all these years, and why... why I'd left Liege Furio. I was trying to escape my feelings for so long, trying to deny who I truly was."   
Immense gold-copper arms enshrouded the snake as Mayhem-- no, Tyrannix; he was himself again-- cradled Copper carefully. "I feel secure... having you around this past day or so... I feel at ease again."   
"You make me feel safe, too, Little Snake," Tyrannix murred softly. "Don't ever leave me."   
"I won't, as long as you promise not to leave me. It's too early to part..."   
"I will be here."

*** 

Livid. Enraged. Out of control. Words could not begin to describe Megatron's mood at that very moment. There was little that any of his "loyal" subjects-- not Sin, nor Quickstrike, Calamity, not even Inferno-- could do to quell the furor spewed forth by an angry Megatron.   
"Simpletons... I am surrounded by singly-minded, incapable simpletons. I used you two and Waspinator," he roared to Calamity and her sister, "as a diversion against all the Maximals, but still you failed! I risked life and limb-- and sanity!-- to procure that which I have gained, this power that grows within me, but you ungrateful whelps must do WHATEVER is in your power to undermine my glory!" A spurt of flame from the Predacon tyrant's dragon-headed left arm punctuated the tirade.   
"The lot of you are worthless. May the Pit find you all if another, more capable stasis pod does not make planetfall soon." His wings cut a razor-sharp arc as the beast turned on his heel and trod off, leaving inch-deep gouts in the deckplating where the rear talons on his feet had landed.   
Sin merely glared his direction, long after the door to Megatron's quarters had closed and-- with a more audible than usual whirring click-- locked. "Hope you're happy, skidbrain," Sin growled, without so much as an over-the-shoulder glance at her sister. "You've made him angry. An angry Megatron is an unforgiving, irrational Megatron. No matter HOW hard we try to appease him now, he's gonna hold our butts to the fire. If you--"   
A piercing shrill voice answered Sin.   
"I think I speak for all the Predacons when I tell you to shut the fuck up."   
The moth turned rapidly to face the new voice, and was met with... herself?!   
"What in the pit?"   
"Like it?" the mirror-Sin grinned toothily. "I got if off the rack at Nieman Marcus... I think it makes me look like a two dollar whore, who'd give out change..." The doppelganger raised an eyebrow and caught the rapidly approaching three-fingered fist in her own three-digit mitt. "Ah ah ah," she scolded, the stubby metal fingers clutching the true Sin's hand, extending to needle tipped talons, "we mustn't strike a lady..."   
"You're no lady, Constrictor," Sin hissed sharply, throwing another punch at the doppelganger's midsection.   
"Too predictable." The fist, instead of striking hard dermal plating, was absorbed into the anti-Sin's stomach plate. "Now to never let go."   
Sin's eyes were white with rage; her lips had narrowed to a thin black slit on her chin. "I've had enough," she snarled, as, in a blossom of green and orange, the mock-Sin exploded in a shower of mercuric embers, skittering across the deckplate like spilled ball bearings, and pulling themselves back together-- although in a less eye-catching form-- across the room.   
"Looks like that curse energy of yours packs a whollop to my systems, bitchbot... now I know who not to mess with. Mark my words, babe, you're goin' down."   
A hiss later, and a metallic green snake was slithering out of the chamber.   
Constrictor had returned home with a message: same bitch, new tricks. 


	6. Something Frightening

Year of the Dragon

Author's note: All characters are copyright their respective creators. I do not own Transformers and I am not affiliated with Hasbro or Takara, Mainframe or Alliance, nor should any affiliation be inferred, implied or assumed. Enjoy the fic. Historian's note: "Indeterminate Timeframe" events occur shortly after when "Master Blaster" and "Crossing the Rubicon" would have occured.   
  


**Year Of The Dragon: Being Part The Second of the Zodiac Arc   
Chapter Six**

  


****Earth, Indeterminate Timeframe**   
Skyfire looked at Primal, something between rage and utmost respect flickering there. The foolish Maximal captain had no idea with whom he was dealing, and all for the better, he thought. It will give me time for my plans...   
"Unicron is eternal," he muttered. Primal didn't hear it. "Much to my chagrin..."   
"You say something, kid?"   
Skyfire turned to see the femme standing in the doorway, and his spark leapt. HER! he sneered internally. O, the Fates do me a great service this day! To rend her spark from its core would be the greatest--   
"Nah, just thinking aloud," he replied, hiding the leap of malicious joy he felt. Skyfire stood, straightened his wings and mantled them across his back, wiggled his tail a bit, and walked toward Blackarachnia. "Hi, I'm Skyfire," he blushed.   
"Blackarachnia," the spider-woman replied, totally uninterested in the kid, more preoccupied with the computer terminal he was blocking. "Excuse me," she ordered, her words sounding less like a request and more like a threat. The legs brushed past Skyfire like dead treelimbs, and he extended a hand to feel one. Oh, the silky metallic feeling of transmetallic chitin... Skyfire caught himself and made a disgusted face.   
Later, he thought... Later she'd die horribly. Later he could rupture her spark so that it would dissipate and never meet the Matrix. Later, he'd have his revenge.   
"If she's here, where's that idiot Waspinator?" Skyfire muttered as he strutted down the hallway in his cockatrice beast form. It was almost a hop, Skyfire's swagger, since the avian legs of a cockatrice barely brought the creature a foot off the ground. The result, though comical in appearance, was not particularly humorous when one considered Skyfire's demeanor of late. "And that dullard Predacon captain..." Skyfire snickered.   
He ran almost headlong into Rhinox, as the larger Maximal made his way down the corridor. "Not getting into any trouble, are you, Skyfire?"   
As much as the cockatrice wished to rend Rhinox limb from limb for his impertinence, Skyfire played along. "Of course not," he replied cheerfully. "Wouldn't dream of it."   
  
Copperhead knew something was up with the kid. So did Pantera. Tyrannix had an inlkling, and Tera's kids got the same feeling Tera had. It was dark outside when the group assembled. "That kid is bad news," Nari growled, pacing back in forth in beast mode. "Wulfie thought she saw him trying to access the bases's security grid."   
The black-striped white wolf nodded. "Mamacat said she gets this chill down her spine every time she passes him, like he's trying to grab her attention or something. Copper, you know anything?"   
The snake nodded. "Yeah, but I don't think you want to hear it. The cursory mental scan I give everyone echoed. The only person my telepathy's ever bounced from has been dead for millennia."   
Pantera knew who Copperhead meant.   
"But he showed up recently," the jaguar growled. "Didn't he, Copper?"   
A grim nod was the only answer she needed. "So, you think it's him?" she queried.   
"Think about it..." Copper began. "Every time any of us sees him, he's all goody-two-shoes, but the moment we turn our backs on him, he's hacking into the base's systems... sound like anyone you know, Tera?"   
Blancwulf and Inuarai looked at Pantera. Tyrannix looked at Copperhead. "Something you're not telling us?" they asked in unison.   
"Starscream is here... again. The bastard must have a death wish!" she roared, transforming and bursting through the Ark base's main door. "Skyfire!" she barked. "Skyfire, get your green scaley skidplate out here this moment or I am coming in there handcannon blazing!"   
Rhinox and Blackarachnia stared at her blankly. "What's goin'--" Rhinox began, but Tera interrupted him.   
"Where in the slot is he?!" she growled.   
"Down near the residence quarters... he's..."   
Tera stalked past him, exuding an air colder than space. Close behind was Copperhead, then the two children, and Tyrannix.   
"I wonder..." Rhinox muttered, a bewildered look on his face.   
Blackarachnia snickered. "I knew there was something off about that kid," she muttered. "They're going to lynch him."   
"Sounds like fun," Rhinox sighed, then went back to tinkering on the control panel.   
  
Skyfire had locked himself behind Primal's office door. "Come OUT!" Pantera screamed, pounding her fists on the blast shielding. "Get OUT of there!"   
No response from behind the sealed door. "That's it." She took a step back and cocked her hand cannon, aiming it at the locking mechanism. "Get back, kids," she ordered, firing a bolt into the lock and setting it sizzling. Still, the door didn't open. "Primus DAMMIT!"   
"Perhaps I can be of assistance," Tyrannix offered, unsheathing the claws in each of his fingertips. "Tritanium alloy can only be cut by..." He drove the talons into the door. "...tritanium alloy." The door was rent from its hinges like so much paper being shredded.   
"There we go," he smiled, throwing the 20-foot, two-ton door aside as if it were nothing.   
Pantera stepped through, handcannon still charged, eyes glowing almost white with rage. "Come out," she hissed.   
Skyfire crept out of the shadows, wings spread, eyes glowing the same near-white blue as Pantera's.   
"Something you've neglected to tell me, Arty?" Skyfire asked, his voice changed from its normal bouyant teenager tone to a gravelly drone that was instantly recognizable.   
"Why did you do it, Flyboy?" Pantera demanded, training her blaster on the kid. "Where's the real Skyfire?"   
"Oh, he died long ago... it was the price for this shell. His spark didn't even make its way into the Matrix. It just... evaporated. The poor child... all that's left is some control protocols and the little latent ability he left me as his legacy."   
"You... bastard!" she shrieked, leaping on him with catlike fury. "You murderer... not worth all the pain..." The claws on her fingers ripped at the bot's faceplate, digging deep routs in the metal plating, her razor edged tail dashing itself into his side like a scorpion's strike. "I'm going to make you pay--"   
She was stopped short by a horrible jabbing pain in her chest, a pain which seemed to spread throughout her entire body, affecting every fiber of her soul.   
"Nice try, Arty," Screamfire chuckle-hissed. "Don't forget the old power possessed by the cockatrice. The ability to stun with a glance."   
Pantera strained to move her head, but her body refused.   
"The ability... to kill... with a thought. Look into my eyes, my love."   
The cockatrice-bot cackled as he wrenched Pantera's spark, overriding her personal controls and tilting her head so that her optics met his.   
==You know what to do?==   
==Yes, Little Snake.==   
Copper shot a glance to Inuarai and Blancwulf as well.   
Skyfire's arms were cleft from his body at the joint. The long, writhing tail was exploded by a shot from Blancwulf's railgun, sending him writhing in pain.   
"Unhand me!" he shrilled. "I shall have your sparks for this misdeed! When I rule Cybertron you shall be first against the wa--"   
Stasis lock. Primal had entered, and Primal was mad.   
He towered over all of them, even hunched over in his beast mode-- a form he seldom used unless extremely agitated-- and he was livid. "What are you doing? You'll kill him."   
"He can't be killed, Primal."   
Optimus blinked.   
"This is Starscream."   
He blinked again.   
"You're not serious. He was--"   
"Shut up! Right now, Primal, SHUT UP! He can transcend time and space, and you know that. He CHOSE to follow me here... the little bastard... I am going to kill him, I don't care if it's not possible, I am going to do it and then I'm going to resurrect him and I'm going to do it again!" By now, Tyrannix and the recently arrived Cheetor were holding the livid, almost colorless transformer by her shoulders. One shoulder was flaring violet as her eyes crackled ice blue. A bestial growl-- like an angry jaguar-- bubbled up and around her voice, showing exactly how enraged Pantera had become.   
"Someone... get that body to CR!" Primal ordered. "Pant--"   
"No, you idiot! Heal him and he'll just wreak more havoc! You have to do WORSE than that..."   
"Get him out of here... get Pantera as far away from Skyfire as possible. She's confined to quarters. Rhinox, Arachnia, get in here!"   
The immense rhino plodded in as fast as his stumpy legs could carry him, followed by a multicolored spider scuttling across the ceiling. "Something we can do?" Rhinox offered, transforming.   
"Rhinox, get Skyfire to a CR chamber. Blackarachnia, help Pantera to her rooms." Optimus's optics had narrowed to slits, which he kept locked dead center on Pantera.   
Rhinox scooped up the severed limbs of the twitching, static-locked Skyfire and gingerly spirited them out of Primal's office, while Blackarachnia, Cheetor, and Tyrannix kept the Elder Maximal from rushing after Rhinox with her guns blazing. "Traitor!" she screamed after the TM2 pachyderm. "How can you help that... ABOMINATION?!"   
Rhinox had gone, and with him, some of Tera's rage... perhaps getting him out of her sight had calmed her some, perhaps some of his mental influence was waning as he slipped into unconsciousness. Either way, Pantera's tension had melted to the point where only Cheetor needed to restrain her.   
"I'm okay now," she muttered, falling to her knees. "I'll be fine in a sec... could someone help me up?"   
Blackarachnia's clawed hand reached out first, and Pantera grabbed it, hauling herself up and stabilizing herself with her opposite hand on Arachnia's shoulderplate. "Where's Primal stowing me?"   
Arachnia turned and lead Pantera into the corridor and back to her quarters.   
"Ain't the Sunstreaker Arms, but it's home," Blackarachnia chuckled as she slid the door open. "Sit here for a bit and calm yourself... you'll feel better tomorrow morning, I bet. Say, wanna go on a recon mission? I'm supposed to rendezvous with birddog at sunrise, and with his libido lately, I'd like some feminine companionship. I could work it out with Primal..."   
Tera, almost teary eyed, gazed at the arachnid. "I'd like that-- thanks for the offer," she accepted. "Goodnight."   
"Get some rest. Just try and relax."   
"Easier said," Pantera sighed and leaned against the wall.   
"G'night, prettykittybot."   
"'Night, prettyspiderbot."   
The door closed, leaving Pantera in the swallowing, comforting darkness. 

***

Rhinox quickly keyed in the repair sequence, but he knew something was amiss-- there was little actual danger to the spark. All his systems were pretty much nominal. The sound of Blackarachnia's clattering feet alerted him again, and he looked in the she-spider's direction.   
"What's going on with Tera?" he asked, splitting his attention between the CR pod and the shapely femme.   
"She and... it...," Blackarachnia reported with a derisive sneer, "have a somewhat romantic past. During the Wars. When Starscream got vaped by Galvatron, she'd thought he was gone forever. Little did she know the Air Commander was-- is-- an immortal. So he's followed her around for the past 300 years, give or take his 'vacations' into the past and future."   
"Sounds like the ultimate lost puppy."   
"Yes, but when has a lost puppy been responsible for the deaths of millions?" she chuckled. "It's like they're linked."   
"And Starscream, the Great Air Commander," Rhinox mused sarcastically, "is floating in our CR gas."   
"Yeah... unnerving, isn't it?"   
"And we're resuscitating him why?" Rhinox wondered.   
"I think Primal doesn't believe Pantera." Blackarachnia shook her head. "He's going to get us all killed, or worse."   
Rhinox sighed defeatedly. "I am exhausted. Would you mind watching the tank for a while? It feels like I haven't recharged since the Great Upgrade."   
"Get some rest, big guy," she smiled, patting Rhinox on the shoulder. As he got up to leave, and as Arachnia took the seat he'd vacated, she wondered aloud. "So if he can't die, how was he ever born?"   
"Search me... I'm too tired to argue quantum metaphysics. Good night." 

***

If your name was Rampage, you'd probably be interested in few things other than carnage, murder, and, well, existing to rampage. Of the seventy Predacons, Decepticons, and Autobots with that name over the millennia, sixty-seven of them were sentenced to AI or shipped off to Webworld for their murderous tendencies. Two of them-- including the original Predacon tiger Rampage-- were killed in action fighting for their cause (generally under the banner of rampant destruction). The last one, Rampage number seventy, had been born with the designation Protoform X. He was the last reminder of a character most Maximals-- and Predacons, Decepticons, and especially certain Autobots-- had wished to purge from their collective minds. But in their hubris, the Maximal Council of Elders had decided to go ahead with their pet project: to clone the immortal, unsnuffable essence of an ancient Decepticon Air Commander. And thus was born Protoform X. Inside an already unstable protoform mind, the essence of Starscream took over. X went on rampage after murdrous rampage, killing countless dozens as he hopped from space station to space station. He made a final stand at Colony Omikron, where the vast majority of the station's civilian Maximal population was slaughtered mercilessly, given no opportunity to run. There was only one bot strong enough to stand against X. The station's cheif of security was a strong-willed Cybertronian who'd never felt it necessary to claim an allegiance. He protected Cybertron and its people, that was all: no need for a battlecry as he was not a warrior. He was the opposite: a peacemaker. Though, in certain situations, this peace maker would be required to raise a little hell for the peace to be kept.   
  
"Depthcharge," Primal muttered. "Where is he?"   
The computer blinked on and displayed a small Maximal coat-of-arms moving lackadaisically along the western coastline of the continent. "As usual... pacing," Optimus sighed, and switched the monitor off. "He's lost his focus." He reached his orange hand out again, this time to his communications console.   
"Optimus Primal to Depthcharge."   
A moment's delay, then a response. "Up your tailpipe, Primal."   
"Top of the morning to you, too," Optimus chuckled. "Report to base immediately. Pantera's having difficulties coping."   
"On my way." There was no way Depthcharge could decline that order. Pantera and the manta had... a past. He never bothered inquiring of either of them-- both were extraordinarily private individuals-- but he knew they shared a very strong bond. He didn't ask-- didn't want to know-- much more.   
He'd arrived in minutes, rushing in through the main doors, brow furrowed in a crackling rage that hid his sincere worry. "Where is she?" he stormed. "Is she damaged? I swear it Primal if you've harmed the tiniest fur on her backside I'm taking it out of YOURS as payment..."   
"She's fine-- physically. But the moment she saw one of our new Maximals, she became very upset."   
"I don't blame her," Depthcharge sneered. "Whenever X is nearby she gets nervous. Homicidal, even."   
"But Rampage hasn't been seen in this sector in weeks," Optimus countered. "He's probably inactive."   
Depthcharge shook his head and chuckled scornfully. "Naif monkeyboy," he insulted. "My computers are telling me X is nearby. As in, inside your base, nearby." He grabbed the remora blaster from its subspace hutch and cocked it, then pulled out his scanner. "Slot me running! He's... right there."   
He aimed his remora blaster straight at the CR tank where Skyfire slept.   
"Legs... move," he ordered, directing her with the double barreled shotgun-fish.   
Blackarachnia knew rarely to argue with a loaded Sparkbuster rifle. She hurled herself off the stool, letting herself transform to spider mode in midair. A sticky string of energon gossamer shot itself toward the cave ceiling as the arachnid hoisted herself upward. "You crazy son of a glitch, you could have warned me," she muttered.   
"I'm going to fire on that tank in two nanoklicks, Primal, and then I'm going to fire on you, unless you tell me why you're harboring that waste-sucking bastard in your CR pod."   
"Depthcharge!" Primal shouted, moving between the gun barrel and the pod. "That's not Rampage." He made a quick grab for the remora and snatched it away, crumpling the barrels. "His name is Skyfire, and he's... he's lost."   
Deptcharge's optics narrowed. "Liar. My scanners are NEVER wrong!"   
Primal pressed the actuator switch and opened the cr tank to show a small avian and reptilian Maximal-- healed but still unconscious-- held firm by the energon bindings inside.   
"If that's not X, why the slot are my scanners picking it up?"   
"I can answer that," Rhinox replied, rubbing his optics wearily. "For all intents and purposes, the bot in there is Rampage's poppa. I did a little research from the sealed records in the computer... and I cross referenced it with spark harmonics extant in this area. Starscream is in two places at once."   
Depthcharge took a look at his scanners again, and sure enough, there was not one, but two instances of Protoform X's presence nearby. One was strong and vibrant, coming from the direction of the stasis pod-- Skyfire's spark. The other was very faint, deeply static-locked, in the Ark itself, not fifty meters away. "Well I'll be a son of a glitch... he's right."   
Primal looked at Depthcharge's computer screen. "Zoom out to a factor of 30 to one."   
The screen's display shifted, showing a set two purple X's and another with two red ones, approximately 30 miles apart. "See? Rampage and Dinobot are over here." Primal reached over again and closed the CR tank.   
"I see that," he snapped, yanking his porta-screen back and stowing it. "Now the question is... where does that leave me?"   
Primal looked at Depthcharge. "Asking my opinion, or was that rhetorical?"   
Depthcharge regarded Optimus blankly, then looked back at the pad. "Maybe I could arrange some sort of altercation between the real Starscream," he muttered, looking at the CR tank, "and the pretender..."   
Optimus Primal's optics widened to the sizes of small satellite dishes. "I don't think that's wise."   
Depthcharge let out another sarcastic grunt. "Ya don't? Well when've I ever cared about what you thought? One side, Apetimus, I'm getting Tera."   
"I can't let you do that." His words were cold, his stature unwavering. "She's been confined to quarters and removed from active duty."   
"I don't particularly care," Depthcharge threatened. "Get out of my way or I'll find my OTHER Cybershark blaster."   
Primal crossed his arms. "Funny, I recall having the spark of Optimus Prime feeding me from the Matrix. What've you got?"   
"An angry Autobot merc who turned into a gunboat... with a bad attitude."   
"What's changed since then?"   
"Affiliation."   
Primal snorted then deferred to Depthcharge. "Bring her back in one piece, ok? She seems the most stable with you."   
"It's 'bots that she cares about, Primal... she's perfectly normal if me or the kids or Rhinox are around but... you must get on her bad nerve, bananabot. One side."   
Primal sidestepped, allowing Depthcharge through.   
  
Pantera heard a tapping at the door, but she ignored it, instead reaching into herself more and bringing more, previously hidden, thoughts to the surface.   
...why did her past keep coming back to haunt her? One would think 4 eons would be enough place to hide...   
...Starscream has to have some grander purpose for chasing me here again. Maybe there's something between us I need to clear up...   
...the grey kitten Fuzor with blue spots... the little black bird with her fur... the female gryphon... who were they?... why'd they make her feel scared, but at the same time secure?   
"What?" she moaned toward the portal.   
"Landshark," a normally somber voice joked from the other side.   
"Get your tail in here or I'm coming out shooting," Pantera smiled, the first time she'd felt lighthearted in hours.   
The door slid open to reveal the immense form of her love, Big Blue, as she called him, standing, sillhouetted by the light outside.   
"Hey," she said calmly, leaning, facing the floor.   
"How's the kitty?"   
"Should be better... He's out of my hair for the time being. But..."   
"Flyboy's not cooperating. You can feel him, can't you? It's just like I know where X is at any given time... if he's near or far, if he's awake or resting or if he's..." Depthcharge turned away for a moment, stricken for words.   
"Quiet about that, you'll get yourself angry. You don't like me when you're angry," Tera chided. "Whaddya want, Charlie Tuna?"   
"Pussy," he chuckled, grabbing the feline Maximal.   
"Depthcharge!" Pantera chuckled, swept up in the manta's heavy arms. "Where are we going?"   
"Away... for a while. Primal caved when I pointed a gun at him... How about a long camping trip in the mountains? Or..."   
"Hold that thought, big guy," the cat chuckled. "I've got a few things to deal with."   
"Not on my watch you don't." He did what cavemen do: slung her over his shoulder roughly, giving her a playful smack on the skidplate. Her tail wrapped itself around hhis neck for dear life, almost reflexively.   
"No high flying, ok?"   
"Of course."   
Depthcharge spun on his half-manta head heel and trod down the corridor with an uncharachteristic bounce in his step, Pantera slung over his shoulder, swearing at him playfully. Her mood chilled as they passed through the main chamber, where Starscream/Skyfire lay dormant. She lay herself across Depthcharge's shoulder, as if dead or unconscious. Depthcharge distinctly felt a droplet of lubricant roll down his back as she lay there, stunned.   
"We're clear, kitten," he whispered, reaching his right hand to stroke her back. "Daylight's here."   
She lifted her head, looked around, then put it back down, this time, nuzzling Depthcharge's shoulder. "My hero," she snickered.   
"Hey, watch the paintjob," he smiled, then walked into the forest. 


End file.
